


Axiom

by Rasborealis



Category: Forgotten Realms, Neverwinter Nights
Genre: A small amount of kink, Characters Getting Drunk, Characters beating the hell out of each other, Characters twirling staves for no reason, Copious Amounts Of Swearing, Earth meets Faerun, Evil rangers being confused by Count Chocula, F/M, Friendship, Kidnapping, Magic, Male-Female Friendship, Many mentions of wall-punching, Mentions of Sexual Assault, Morally Gray Character(s), No regret was had, PTSD, Playing REALLY fast and loose with canon and d&d rules, Romance, Science, Subversion of Tropes, Taking out aggression on innocent breakfast ingredients, Tropes, Violence, Zero Fucks Were Given, liberties were taken, misogynist language, scientific magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:28:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 74,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28968333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rasborealis/pseuds/Rasborealis
Summary: Verena isn’t enamored with her boring retail job, but hey, it pays the bills, and she’s content enough when she comes home and hangs out with her cat at the end of the day. But then she has to save said cat from getting eaten, and suddenly there’s an army general standing in her kitchen and talking about werewolves, government secrets and other dimensions, and her life takes a very interesting turn.Before she knows it, she’s busy researching trans-dimensional physics, dealing with elite soldiers who act like high schoolers, threatening to smack her smartass boss upside the head, stress-baking every baked good in existence and avoiding a menacing ranger with anger issues who stalks the hallways – and that’s just the beginning.
Comments: 42
Kudos: 8





	1. Anomaly

**Author's Note:**

> Completing Axiom has been quite a ride, and I'm excited to finally share it! Thanks to everyone who helped beta - Drackomancer, Malgriff, Etalice and Aura. Thanks also to Lenya's real life inspiration for being so incredibly inspiring.

**Anomaly**

_(something that deviates from what is standard or normal)_

My life was irrevocably changed when a werewolf tried to eat my cat.

Yes, I know exactly how ridiculous that sounds.

The thing is, I didn’t even know that was what had happened, not until several days later when it all caught up with me in a rush of horrified realization and complete absurdity. Dissociative amnesia was the term for that, the police officer taking my statement explained to me after I’d told him I couldn’t remember anything, and then did some rapid scribbling on his notepad while I clutched Tess to my chest with shaking arms.

Her yowl of terror was one of the last things I remembered. I’d heard it just as I had turned the key in the lock, coming home after an especially long workday and ready to drop into bed, and the sound had sent a jolt of adrenaline through me the likes of which I’d never experienced before. I’d dropped my purse, shoved the door open and bolted into the dark kitchen, only to be faced with two pairs of glowing eyes, one green and familiar, the other yellow and terrifying.

Next thing I remembered, I was standing over a large lump of fur and blood, bruised hands holding a makeshift club – the leg of a chair, actually, a chair that had been whole when I’d last seen it but which was now in a splintered heap against one wall of the kitchen. There was a bent nail sticking out from it, and stuck to the nail was a tuft of gray fur, stirring back and forth with every one of my labored breaths. Tess was yowling again from under the kitchen table, sounding scared but also concerned.

I thought I’d killed a stray dog. The teeth marks on my calf and forearm, the many claw marks, they didn’t leave much room for doubt, or at least I’d thought so.

The rabies shot hurt like hell. When I returned home, the breaking dawn marked the end of a very unpleasant night filled with questions and stitches and worries about how the fuck I would explain all of this to my landlord in a way that wouldn’t make him believe I’d left my door unlocked while I’d been at work. I hadn’t, I knew I hadn’t, but I couldn’t prove it.

The next three days were fairly shit and consisted mostly of me showering Tess with affection and trying not to be afraid at night and at work and every time I returned to my apartment. Of course, when I came home and found my door to be not only unlocked but also standing wide open, I nearly had a heart attack.

I was still busy fumbling for my phone when a broad-shouldered, dark-haired man of around forty in a black and gold tracksuit appeared in the doorway. Shocked and panicked as I was, it took me longer than it should have to see the golden star logo on the jacket, left side of the chest, with the lettering “U.S. Army” beneath it.

“I need to apologize, first of all,” said the man, “I should have waited, but I wanted to have a look at the scene of the, well, killing.”

“What?” I croaked.

“Come on in,” he said, which was really rather rich considering it was _my_ apartment and he was magnanimously inviting me inside, but he carried himself with the sort of calm confidence that allowed him to pull it off, so I followed him anyway. Numbly, I saw that he’d even fed Tess, and there were two steaming cups of coffee on the table.

“It’s evening,” I said blankly.

He raised an eyebrow. “Indeed.”

“So why the coffee?”

“Thought you might need it,” he said and nodded his head at the only remaining chair I owned. “Sit. Please.”

I did and proceeded to stare at him.

“Verena, right?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“I’m Alex.”

My mouth was dry. “Hi Alex. What the fuck are you doing in my home?”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “It’s about half due diligence, half satisfying my curiosity.”

“Curiosity about what, exactly?”

“You,” he said unhelpfully. Then he sighed, crossed his arms and leaned against the wall, frowning down at me like I was a mildly interesting puzzle. “I also need to test your blood.”

I probably would have been more alarmed if he hadn’t been so calm and matter-of-fact about it. Something about his manner kept me from feeling remotely threatened, so while I was still feeling confused and annoyed, it wasn’t anything worse than that.

“Is this about what happened with that dog?” I asked. “I already got a rabies shot.”

“Which would be fine and dandy if it had been a dog, but it wasn’t,” he said.

“Wolf, then?” I guessed.

He studied me for a few seconds that felt way too long and then said, “You’ve got kind of a weird feeling about it, don’t you?”

“I figured that was normal after something like that,” I said carefully. I did feel like I was missing something, like everyone was, including the police who’d checked out the scene, but I couldn’t point to a good reason for having that feeling, so I’d tried my best to suppress it. I had no clue how this Alex knew about it.

“It’s not,” he said. “This is something else, or at least I think so.”

I leaned back carefully. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Do you believe in the supernatural?”

“No. I’m too science-y.”

He sighed. “That’s going to make this slightly more difficult than I was hoping for.”

“Look, can you just…come out and say whatever you’re talking about? I’m really tired. I don’t have the mental capacity to figure out your cryptic hints.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said with a half-shrug. “You killed a werewolf.”

I stared at him. “Course I did.”

He looked at me and waited. I wasn’t sure what for. What he’d said was very obviously ridiculous, and I wasn’t about to indulge him by pretending it made any sort of sense. I had enough to deal with, I did not on top of it need to deal with a lunatic who’d broken into my home and was now demanding-

I groaned. “Is that why you decided you need my blood, because it bit me?”

“Got it in one,” he said and looked absurdly satisfied. “Can’t just leave you be until I know you won’t be causing havoc.”

“I’m not the havoc-causing kind, really.” I could not believe I was actually having this stupid conversation.

“You say that now.” He reached for a black duffel bag I hadn’t noticed and pulled from it a small case, then from that case a rubbery-looking strip. “Arm.”

“Excuse me?”

“Arm. Blood test, remember?”

I was baffled by how much I wanted to comply, how much part of me wanted to treat this as normal. “I’m not giving you my blood. You’re nuts,” I said instead.

“I’d rather not do it the hard way,” he said. “You’ll be bruised to hell; I might end up collapsing the vein.”

“What!” I half-shouted.

“You heard me perfectly well.”

“You’re threatening me.”

He gave me a reproachful look. “No. I’m informing you of what’ll happen, which is that I’m going to draw your blood whether you cooperate or not, so that you can make an informed decision about which option you’d like to take. It’s a quick procedure, I’m sure you’ve had it done before. I can leave right afterwards.”

“I should call the police.”

“You can try,” he said, still _so fucking calm and reasonable_ , like we were having a business lunch or something. “They’ll have a very tough time charging me with anything. And either way, I can stop you from doing it, so the point is moot. I’m really quite good at subduing people.”

I mulled his words over for a moment, glanced at the insignia on his tracksuit and then sighed and held out my arm.

“Thank you,” he said, and got to it.

“Out of curiosity, who’s your commanding officer?” I asked while he had a needle in the crook of my elbow.

He quirked a half-smile. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I don’t think that’s the answer you’re supposed to give if someone asks.”

“I enjoy extraordinarily little oversight,” he informed me.

“Great,” I said flatly.

My blood began to fill a sample tube. I watched it happen for lack of anything better to do.

“I _am_ impressed, you know,” he said after a moment. “Taking on a werewolf isn’t easy, and no offense, but you’re not exactly the athletic type. And you do have an affinity for sensing this sort of thing, whether you admit it to yourself or not, and you work in a retail job you don’t even like and which you’re vastly overqualified for.”

“First of all, I fail to see how those things are related. Second, how in hell do you know I’m overqualified?”

“Graduated high school early, couple of awards, couple of scholarships which I’m not going to bother listing, five semesters of college before dropping out, Mathematics and Phys –”

“What. The fuck?” My mouth had dropped open halfway through his list. “Do you know how _creepy_ that is?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Unluckily for you, that’s not enough to dissuade me.”

“You,” I said, “are un-fucking-believable.”

“And I’m not even a werewolf.”

I glared. After a moment, he tilted his head and began to study me like a science project.

“What?” I asked.

“There are things I’d really like to talk to you about,” he said as he withdrew the needle with care. “But I don’t think you’re ready to hear them.”

I snorted inelegantly. “Definitely not.”

“Yes, I figured as much.” He stowed his equipment back in the duffel bag and then took a large gulp of coffee. “Look,” he said. “If you end up wanting answers, contact me. It doesn’t commit you to anything.” He held out a card, simple, black on white, and I took it automatically. “Unless it turns out you’re infected, you won’t hear from me again and can go on living your life.”

“That’s all?” I asked, feeling skeptical.

“Yep. Have a good night.” He smiled at me, and I watched him leave with vague incredulity. Then I sat there staring at the wall until Tess eventually leapt into my lap and began to purr.

*~*

I lasted over two months before I emailed him. It was a pretty cryptic address, simply _as@irhdcei.mil_ , and I didn’t see the sense in bothering with formalities. After him quasi-breaking into my apartment and bullying me into giving him my blood to test for possible lycanthropy, that sort of thing seemed unbearably frivolous by comparison.

 _What really happened to me?_ I wrote. I assumed the “a” stood for Alex and he would actually be the one to read the question, and that proved to be correct when I received the prompt reply

_You were attacked by a werewolf._

Because that was supremely unhelpful, I decided to be unhelpful as well.

_Technically my cat was the one who was attacked._

_In light of this new information, I am revising my answer: You attacked a werewolf. Happy?_

_Not even close,_ I informed him.

When I returned from work the next evening, my door was open once again.

“For fuck’s sake,” I said to him. He’d brought his own chair this time, and there was sparkling water instead of coffee.

“It seemed the most efficient way,” he said, sounding completely unapologetic. “Please sit.”

I did, and immediately burst out with, “Why is my police report not what it should be?”

He didn’t miss a beat. “Because we try not to leave too much evidence of supernatural incidents lying around.”

“You changed the report?”

“Not personally, but effectively that’s a yes.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“I head a place called the Dome Institute. This sort of thing is part of what we do.”

I closed my eyes and allowed myself a deep sigh. “This is like something I should be able to watch on Netflix.”

“It does sound like that a bit, doesn’t it?”

“A bit, yes,” I said drily.

“Is it really so hard to believe that things like werewolves exist?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because there’s no way it wouldn’t have been exposed and to some degree accepted a long time ago.”

“Unless, of course, the government has been covering up this sort of thing for a very long time.”

“Now you sound like a conspiracy nutcase.”

“I know, little over the top.” He grimaced. “It’s not even true, strictly speaking. These incidents have been popping up more in recent times than they used to. Past twenty to twenty-five years, numbers have been steadily increasing, and no, we don’t know why. Part of what we do at Dome is trying to figure that out.”

“Okay, yeah.” I wanted to bang my head against the table. I wondered if he’d mind. “Secret government institute, werewolves all over the place –”

“Not just werewolves, other things as well. And while the numbers have increased, they’re still exceedingly rare, thankfully.”

“And they just…pop up? Where do they come from? Christ, I can’t believe I’m actually taking this seriously.”

“It’s actually fairly simple, although you might not think so. The werewolf – and other things like it, the sort of thing you might call supernatural – aren’t…native to this place, I suppose you might say.”

“This place?”

“’This dimension’ sounds a bit too sci-fi, in my opinion.”

“’This place’ sounds a bit too _vague,_ if you ask me.”

“I suppose we could just say ‘Earth’. They aren’t native to Earth.”

“Okay,” I said. “Please don’t make me ask the super obvious question.”

“Well, the super obvious answer to your unasked question would be ‘they come from another dimension’. I can’t actually elaborate on it just for the fun of it.”

“Why are you telling me this much in the first place?”

“I have a job that needs filling, and if you decide to take it, you need to know what you’re getting into.”

“A…job.” I said flatly.

“That is what I said, yes.”

I blinked at him. “So, what happens if I say no to the job?”

“If you say no, I’ll go away and won’t bother you again.”

“When you’ve told me this much?”

“Well, for one,” Alex checked off on his fingers, “you seem pragmatic enough to realize that there isn’t a way to use this to your advantage that has a chance in hell of working. Two, you’re bright enough to understand or at least imagine the kind of trouble you’d be in if you started spreading government secrets of this magnitude. I don’t just mean legal trouble; I mean you’d be _screwed.”_

“Well that’s lovely.”

“There’s a third reason, but I can’t tell you that one. Not unless you agree to work for me, that is.”

“What kind of job are you offering me?” I asked.

“Research.”

“That’s…vague.”

“Yes, I know. Makes it kind of difficult for me to sell this; the classified nature of it is rather restricting. But I can tell you that you’ve got a few skills we could use.”

I rubbed my eyes. “You do know,” I said, “that I can’t just say yes to this with as little info as you’ve given me.”

“Have I given you enough to convince you to visit the institute and have a look?”

“Where is it?”

“Greater Chicago area. We’d even pay your travel cost; we’re fancy like that.”

“How do I know it’s not just some elaborate ruse to, like…”

“Steal your kidneys? Easier ways to do that, don’t you think?” He shrugged.

“I wouldn’t know, I’ve never tried plotting that sort of thing.”

“Well, then just…take me by my word, maybe? Because I _know_ your gut feeling tells you to.”

I shook my head and thought about that for a minute. Alex seemed content to wait. I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about any of this, but Alex’ matter-of-fact-ness about the entire thing kept my mind from spinning out of control pretty effectively. I’d spent two months gathering bits of evidence that something truly wasn’t quite right with the entire situation and subsequently getting used to the idea of werewolves, and maybe my subconscious remembered more about the attack than my conscious mind was able to recall, because it was easier to wrap my mind around the entire thing than I’d expected. It was still mind-boggling if I really thought about it, but no longer on the level of batshit insane.

“It’s not as exciting as it sounds, really,” said Alex. “Once you get past the whole supernatural bit.”

“I believe it,” I said, leaned back, and sighed, and thought.

The thing was – my life was at an absolute dead end. The rest of my family had moved out of the country, and I hadn’t followed, and now I was on my own, and we had very little contact. I’d dropped out of college and now carried that stigma around with me, and I was still disgusted with myself for not having been strong enough to keep going. I had, embarrassingly, no friends, because I had so much trouble making them, and when I wasn’t at work, Tess was my only company. I hated my job. My landlord was lying in wait so he could kick me out as soon as I screwed up one more tiny thing.

In the end, it was really very simple – there was no scenario in which I could turn him down and not regret it. “You know what, fuck it,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll take the job.”

His eyebrows rose. “That was…sudden.”

“Please don’t ask for my reasons.”

He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Okay, I won’t.”

Tess jumped into my lap at that point. She was good at sensing when I needed comfort. My arms wrapped around her automatically when she went on her hind paws to nuzzle my chin.

“So, what now?” I asked.

“Now we give you some time to tie up any loose ends here, quit your job, pack your things, and then we’ll help you move to the institute.”

“Is there, like, housing?”

He nodded. “We’re…I wouldn’t say in the middle of nowhere, but we’re definitely not in a central and convenient location, so it wouldn’t make sense to have everyone commute. Rooms are rather nice, actually, I don’t think you’ll complain. We’ve got a mess hall, and you’ll have access to a kitchen as well – you like to bake, right? You’ll be able to do that if you like.”

“How could you _possibly_ know that about me?”

“We’ve had you under surveillance.”

I stared. “Seriously?” I asked weakly.

“Don’t worry, it wasn’t intrusive.”

“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”

“Yes, well, welcome to working for the government.” He drank some water. “As for the pay…let’s just say you’re unlikely to complain about that, either.”

“I see.” I stared down at my glass. “Fucking hell, I’m actually going to do this.”

“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Yes, you are.”


	2. Paradigm Shift

**Paradigm Shift**

_(a fundamental change in approach or underlying assumptions_ _)_

I didn’t figure out Alex was an active-duty four-star army general until after I’d arrived at the institute and he’d invited me into his office.

“But,” I said helplessly, “I’ve been calling you Alex.”

“I’m ecstatic that your powers of observation meet my baseline standard,” was his response. There was a small, mostly suppressed noise from the unassuming young woman who had addressed him as ‘General’, but she remained otherwise silent and wide-eyed.

“What even is your full name?” I asked as I absorbed the fact that my new boss was a high-ranking smartass.

“Alexander Simoni. Pleasure to meet you.”

“Were you ever going to tell me about your rank?”

“I have faith you’d have figured it out eventually, considering this is a military installation. You did notice that part, yes?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said. “Yes, of course I did.”

“Now, would you like a tour, or would you like more time to be properly outraged?”

“Fine,” I said. “Tour. Please.”

He handed me a yellow folder and waved me after him.

“So you’ve found my office, which is great –”

I made a sound of amusement. “I had to ask four different people. _Four._ ”

His eyebrows went up. “It’s not _that_ hard.”

“Everyone seemed to assume that I knew whatever terms they were throwing around. What the hell is ‘Res’?”

“Ah, okay. That’s the residential building.”

“Would have been great if someone had explained that to me before I ran blindly across a bunch of skywalks.”

“Well, now you know, which is the important bit, and there’s a map in your folder as well. Yeah, Res is the building that looks sort of like a…triangle with blunt corners, I suppose. We’ll go there last and I’ll show you your room.”

“Right.” I frowned as I followed him into the hallway. “So, this is the Admin building? That’s what it’s called?”

“The floor is Admin. The building is Main, because…take a wild guess.”

“It’s the main building?” I said drily.

“Precisely. On this floor, we’ve got my office, and over there is Major General Kirby, she’s my second in command. I’ll introduce her to you at some other point, she’s not here right now. Colonel Roth, there, oversees Containment, and Colonel Haley oversees the Strikers.”

“The who and the what now?” I asked, already feeling overwhelmed, and we hadn’t even left this floor yet.

“Ah.” He scrubbed his palm across his face. “Sorry. I thought…look, I’ve had a fairly ridiculous week, you’ll have to excuse my scatterbrained approach to this. I thought I’d already explained when we last talked.”

“Yeah, no,” I said. “I have no idea what any of that meant. You’re really throwing me into the deep end here.”

“Well then swim, little fishie,” he said, and waved for me to follow him down the hallway. “Alright. You found out what Dome’s full name is yet?”

“No.”

“We are the Institute for the Research and Processing of DOME-Class Extraordinary Intelligence.”

“Well that’s a mouthful.”

“Hence the short version,” Alex said. “Dome. Or institute. Whichever.”

“What’s the dome-class…something intelligence? What does that mean?”

“DOME is the official classification for any information to do with Faerun – that’s the name of the other dimension. It’s literally all we do here, it’s the entire purpose of this installation.”

“’Kay, makes sense. Finally, _something_ does.”

“Sorry,” Alex said, not sounding sorry at all. “I’m normally not the one who does tours and orientations.”

“Why am I special, then?”

“Never you mind. We’ve got a lot of things to go through, here.” We’d reached a stairwell and he led me downward. “Dome’s got three main purposes, three branches – research, maintaining secrecy, and dealing with dangerous or violent threats. The one that maintains secrecy is called Containment. We’ll take a left here, it’ll lead us to the research wing. If you were to keep walking straight ahead through that entire wing, you’d reach Containment. They’re pretty much off in their own little world over there, doing things like alter police reports and keep werewolf-bashing young women under surveillance.”

“You’re hilarious,” I said drily.

“I know. They’ve got a memory-altering drug, too.”

I stopped dead and stared at him with wide eyes.

“Don’t worry, use of it is strictly controlled. And it doesn’t simply erase things – this isn’t a movie. It just puts the subject into a highly suggestible state, which means it’s fairly easy to convince them that the past few hours were just a really vivid dream.”

“Oh god,” I said faintly.

“Don’t freak out on me, please. If anyone had used it on you, you’d be able to tell – I can give you a checklist of symptoms, if it would make you feel better.”

I gulped. What the everloving _fuck_ had I gotten myself into? “Yes, I think it would.”

“Right. Remind me later. Moving on. The research wing is overseen by Major Garcia. He’s the one you’ll be working under.”

I nodded.

“On the other side of Main, we’ve got the prism.”

I took out my map and frowned at it. “This thing here?”

“Yes. I’ve got this suspicion that I know what you’re about to say.”

“That’s the first one I passed, getting here, right? The one with the large windows at the bottom? That building does _not_ look like a prism. I suppose if you looked strictly at the base and if you drew an invisible line from –”

_“Please_ spare me,” Alex said. “I _know._ Somebody called it that, I don’t know who – if I did, I’d send the complaints their way, because trust me, this is not the first time I’ve heard that. We’ve got a bunch of scientists here who are all really offended on behalf of geometry and physics. But the name stuck, so it is what it is.”

“Noted. So. Prism?”

“The prism is mostly just a training facility. As I said, we occasionally need to go out and deal with threats, violent creatures, that sort of thing. We have a group of people who do that – we call them Strikers.”

“Is it because they strike things?” I deadpanned.

“Pretty much. And no, I did not make that one up, either. They’ve got two trainers who have their offices in the prism. And as I mentioned before when you got all confused, they’re overseen by Colonel Haley, who is back in Main.”

“Please tell me you’re not expecting me to memorize the names you’ve been throwing at me right now. Also, question – I get that this is a military installation, but I’m still a civilian, so…do I call them what everyone else calls them? What if I offend someone?”

“If you offend someone, they can pout about it on their own personal time. We’re not expecting any civilians who work here to fall in line with the enlisted folks, really. As you might have noticed, I run this place somewhat…unconventionally.”

“No shit,” I said. “Alex.”

He looked amused. “That’s the spirit.”

“When you first came and threatened me into giving you my blood, you said something about how you enjoyed very little oversight.”

He nodded and put his hands in his pockets, frowning into the distance as though in thought.

“Remember how I told you that things from Faerun have been popping up with increasing frequency?” he asked eventually.

I nodded.

“There have been a lot of attempts over the years to figure out how to deal with it all. There was this task force sort of thing for a while, way back, and then they founded the institute. There were several people who ran it before me, but none of them saw any significant results or successes. I’m not sure _why_ I’m so much better at it than any of them, but I am, and everyone up top is just glad they have one less headache to worry about.”

“So, essentially, unless you set fire to the place, they let you do what you like?”

“Pretty much.”

“Then…” I frowned. “You know, I’m really glad that you seem to be a halfway decent person, because otherwise that could really suck.”

“Thanks…I think.” He indicated for me to go right, and we turned a corner only to face one of the skywalks I’d crossed several times in my uncoordinated wandering earlier.

“So, Res,” he said. “Three floors, each has a men’s and a women’s section. Rooms have numbers like in a hotel – you’ll learn the system pretty quickly. You’ll get a key card about the size of a USB drive. Most people end up putting them on a keychain or something. They’re pretty durable, so even if you stomp on it, it’ll be fine. Door locks have logs of when they were opened, and who opened them – so if anyone with a master key goes in, you’ll know about it. Door to the bathroom has a lock on it as well, you can choose to engage that one or not. You can also do some fancy stuff with who has access to your room, but you’ll have to go to tech support in Main to get that explained.”

“My head’s spinning a tiny bit,” I told him.

“You should tell it to stop.” He smirked, looking very much not like I would have expected an army general to look, and I knew then and there that I was in for a very interesting ride.

*~*

Alex’ tour, though helpful, hadn’t been what one might call comprehensive, and despite the map, I was only slightly less confused by the skywalks and stairwells and nondescript hallways as I’d been before, so I still managed to get lost on my first excursion to the mess hall.

I ended up having to do the whole new-kid-in-the-high-school-cafeteria experience where I carried my tray past the tables and wondered where to sit. I wasn’t sure who the scientists were, or whether it would be alright to sit with them if I hadn’t technically been introduced to them yet, and I thought it would probably be even stranger if I accidentally approached a group of Strikers or people working in Containment.

I hated this. I’d hated it back in school, and I hated it now, and I was _really_ bad at figuring out how to act and what to do in a situation like this.

Eventually, I spotted the young dark-haired woman who had outed the general’s rank to me, sitting by herself off to the side, and figured that it was the best opportunity I was likely to get. She gave me a shy smile as I approached.

“Do you mind?” I asked.

“Not at all.” She inched to the side as though to make space, even though there was more than enough – she was slight and had her shoulders pulled forward like she was cold. “Um…Verena, wasn’t it?” Her voice was sweet and soft, and I strained to hear it over the din of the mess hall.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “And you are?”

“Lenya. Hi.” She raised her hand and waved it even though I was sitting less than a foot away from her, which was kind of adorable. I couldn’t help but wonder how old she was. I was only twenty, and I felt far older than her, but maybe she had just grown up sheltered and her behavior reflected that.

“What do you do in this place then, Lenya?” I asked as I arranged the items on my tray so I could start eating.

She tilted her head and frowned slightly. “A few different things,” she said.

“You don’t have an official job title?”

“Um…” She took a moment, visibly thinking, and then shrugged. “I suppose I don’t, or at least I haven’t been told.”

That was odd. “Well, what do you actually do?”

“I’m kind of like the general’s aide sometimes, I do a lot of his mail, and I do lots of errands, deliver things within the institute, that sort of thing. I just like to be useful.”

“That sounds…unconventional.”

She faltered and looked down at her food for a while. Just when I had become convinced that she wasn’t going to answer, she did.

“The thing is, I wasn’t really hired or anything, I…I lost my…my family to an attack, a couple of years ago. The general won’t tell me what it was – to prevent the nightmares from getting worse, I think. I was at a friend’s house that day, and by the time I came back, they were all gone and people from the institute were already there. Nobody knew what to do with me, afterwards. I think he just felt bad.”

My heart had sunk to what felt like the floor by the time she stopped talking. “Well, shit,” I said. “I’m sorry I brought back memories with that question.”

“It’s fine,” she said softly. “I chose to answer, you didn’t make me. And I prefer telling you, instead of forcing you to ask someone else.”

“Fair enough,” I said.

“You’re not military, are you? Most people here are, but you don’t look the type.” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean…oh god, sorry!”

“Huh?” It took me a moment to catch on. “Oh.” I looked down at my body, which wasn’t exactly in what one might call combat shape. In a nutshell, high school math class had always been laughably easy for me, but memories of P.E. were nightmare fuel. “Don’t apologize, it’s not like it isn’t obvious. I’m here for my brains, not my brawn.”

“Wow,” she said, and looked as impressed as I might have been by watching someone doing five backflips in a row. “That’s so cool.”

“Thanks, but I haven’t even started yet,” I pointed out. “I might be absolutely shit at this job.”

“I don’t think you will be,” she said, and I thought it was nice that at least one of us was confident about that.

“I feel like I’m already screwing up,” I admitted. “It’s all very confusing, and I know literally no one except Alex, and I suppose you now.”

She smiled and looked absurdly pleased, then glanced down, biting her lip. “I’ve got very little time today, but if you like, you can stop by my room sometime this next week, and I’ll try and answer whatever questions you might have?”

“That sounds absolutely brilliant,” I said, taking the metaphorical hand she reached out with like a lifeline.

*~*

“The Veil is one-way porous,” I was informed by Edgar – Major Garcia – the lab supervisor, the next day, and it was one of the least bizarre, pompous-sounding things he’d said to me that morning. I frowned at the blackboard behind him, which held a diagram of two side-by-side circles separated by a vertical squiggly line, which was apparently called a Veil. Or _the_ Veil. I wasn’t entirely sure.

“Do you understand what that means?” Edgar asked me, and I was pretty sure I sensed a slight note of condescension.”

“That it lets things through one way but not the other,” I said. “Like a one-way valve.”

“Kind of yes, but also kind of no,” he said vaguely.

I pointed from one circle to the other. “Which way does it let things through? Earth to Faerun, or Faerun to Earth?”

Faerun, as Edgar had wasted no time informing me, was a medieval hellhole full of dangerous creatures and people killing each other with swords. I chose to take all of it with a grain of salt, because he struck me as the kind of guy utterly convinced of his own superiority. The Veil was the nebulous _something_ separating Faerun from Earth. I had literally no grasp on how to picture it, so for now my head clung to imagining a soft, gauzy material – a _one-way porous_ material, apparently.

“Excellent question,” Edgar said like he was my after-school tutor. I mentally banged my head against the wall at the thought of having to work with this dude. “It goes Faerun to Earth. It’s worth mentioning that the one-way stipulation is only a theory, because we just don’t know enough to be able to tell for sure. We don’t know if or how we can go through the Veil, we only know that sometimes, things fall through from over there.”

“Like werewolves,” I said.

“Well, more than that,” he corrected, even though I hadn’t actually insisted that it was _only_ werewolves. “Lots of living creatures have come through. Also, interestingly enough, abstract things. Thoughts, impressions.”

I frowned. “Can you give me an example?”

“Some events that happen over there seep through, in stories and dreams and such.”

“How do we know what events happened over there?”

“We were told by people who fell through, of course,” he said, as though it should have been obvious. I did not think it was. The whole thing was fascinating, but also very, very abstract. “It’s rare, but it happens. There is a sister organization in London, the Goldcrest Fellowship, who has someone from Faerun working with them right now. They won’t give us access to her though. It’s petty and frustrating, but it is what it is.” He rolled his eyes.

“Right,” I said.

Edgar walked over to a shelf stuffed full of books and papers and folders, frowned at it for about twenty seconds, and then came back with a thin sage green three-ring binder, which he handed to me.

“This is a summary of the things we study about Faerun, and the findings we’ve gathered so far,” he said.

“Not much,” I said, eyeing it.

“It isn’t exactly easy to gather this sort of information,” he said waspishly.

“I didn’t mean to criticize,” I said. “I assume you want me to study all of this, yes?”

“Read through it and let me know what areas you’re particularly interested in,” he said. “I can give you more in-depth information on those, and then I can start trying to figure out where to place you. You’ve got a math degree or something, yes?”

“No, actually,” I said. “I didn’t finish college.”

I did not like the look he gave me in response, like I’d just said something terribly offensive. Alex hadn’t seemed bothered by my lack of a degree, but Edgar apparently held more elitist views.

“I’m not sure what you would be suited to,” he said. “I’ll figure it out.”

I didn’t particularly like the way he said _I_ and not _we,_ but I bit my tongue. No sense in fucking myself over the first day on the job.

*~*

“So,” Lenya said that evening, when we were once again sitting next to each other in the mess hall. “How did you like Gargar?”

I stared at her. “Gar…gar?”

She grinned impishly and ducked her head. “Ed _gar_ _Gar_ cia. Gargar.”

“It sounds like Jar Jar,” I said, and then it dawned on me. “Oh my god, the gangly limbs are just the same.”

“And he purses his lips like that all the time,” Lenya pointed out in a whisper.

“That is the best thing I’ve heard this year.”

Lenya grinned proudly, put her fork down and propped her chin on her hand. “So. How did you like him?”

“He’s…” I paused and tried to find a way to phrase it delicately.

She nodded as though that was exactly what she had expected. “From what I’ve gathered, he isn’t easy to be around, but as lab supervisor he can make your life pretty hard if he doesn’t like you, so you might want to just pretend he’s the most fascinating human being on the planet when you’re around him.”

“Good to know,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll try my best to make sure he likes me.”

*~*

Gargar did not like me.

It became beyond obvious that I had already screwed things up from his standpoint, because even though I tried my best to be respectful and nice to him, he assigned me to the task I was by far the least interested in doing, which was dealing with raw data collected by several instruments that no one really understood and that might or might not have had anything to do with the Veil. Gargar couldn’t tell me much about what he expected me to glean from the data, but he told me he expected to see progress, and also to be given tangible results eventually.

“Great,” I said to myself once he left me alone at a tiny desk in a corner with a hard drive full of data and pages upon pages of printouts that contained nothing but numbers. I was given looks of moderate pity by the other researchers and lab techs on my floor, who turned out to be exclusively male, for some stupid reason. It made me wonder whether my gender was part of the reason Gargar was the opposite of enamored with me, and I resolved to look into that if his treatment of me got to the point of intolerable.

The first instrument was one Gargar thought might measure vibrations within the membrane that separated Earth from the Veil, although the existence of said membrane was only another theory. I took to calling it the vibrometer for simplicity’s sake, because it appeared not to have a name.

The second instrument measured something about the Veil, the density or the pressure fluctuations or something of the sort. Nobody knew for sure. I called that one the barometer, because while it did have a name, it was complicated and counterintuitive, and I kept forgetting it.

The third instrument was one that nobody could tell me a damn thing about except for the parts it consisted of. It was a chrome-plated strontium probe in a vacuum chamber, it took a measurement every quarter of a second, and the numbers it produced generally fell within a fairly narrow range, although every once in a while there was a cluster of extremely strange data spanning several seconds. It was like a calm pond that someone occasionally threw a pebble into, I decided, and while I first referred to it as the whatsit, I soon decided upon the name Pond-Apparatus.

Yeah, I didn’t even care.

Because math was what I knew, it was what I did. I proceeded to throw the numbers into any and all equations I could think of, graphed them in a hundred different ways, compiled mountains of statistics that probably meant nothing at all and just generally threw everything at the wall and tried to see what stuck. Unfortunately, nothing did. Nobody could have accused me of not putting effort into the entire thing, but progress…that was a different story.


	3. Watershed

**Watershed**

_(an event or period marking a turning point in a state of affairs)_

Six weeks after I started working at the institute, a man fell through the Veil from the other side.

I was one of the first to hear about it because Lenya had quickly become my best friend at the institute, and I spent quite a bit of time talking to her. When she wasn’t in the mess hall during lunch one day, I went looking for her, and eventually I found her frantically pacing in her office – which was the antechamber to Alex’ office – phone in hand.

“No,” she said, tone more intense and serious than I’d ever heard. “Do _not_ move him. We strongly recommend that you avoid interacting with him altogether until General Simoni is present. Yes, he’ll be there within the hour. No, I can’t give out any other information about the prisoner. It’s against protocol.”

“Wow,” I said when she had hung up. “That was pretty commanding.”

“Um, well, the general made me roleplay it a bunch, and I’ve had to do it once before.” She bit her lip. “I still don’t like doing it though.”

I half-sat on the edge of her desk. “What happened?”

“A bunch of keywords pinged.”

“…what now?”

“Containment is able to put newly filed police reports through a search algorithm,” she explained. “There’s a set of keywords that they scan for, unusual behaviors or weapons, really anything that might stick out to a police officer processing someone from Faerun enough to make a note of. They’re pretty sure we found someone who fell through.”

“Holy shit,” I breathed, because by now I knew what a huge deal that was.

She nodded and continued to chew on her lip.

“What actually pinged?” I asked. “Like, what was in the report? Do you know?”

“Well,” she said and swallowed hard, “a man killed several people with a longbow in southern Illinois early this morning. He didn’t have identification and refused to give his name, and he seemed bewildered by a lot of ordinary things.”

“Holy _shit,”_ I repeated. “I know things are different over there and all, but he _killed_ a bunch of people?”

She nodded. “Well, to be fair, he might have been very disoriented and panicked. I’m not sure what falling through the Veil is like, but just the change in surroundings would probably mess with you. But I know what you mean. It’s unnerving, especially because the general is bound to bring him here if he really is from over there.”

“Yeah,” I said and tried not to choke on my own spit, “great.”

*~*

The man nearly killed one of the Strikers before he’d even been at the institute for an hour. Word spread fast after that – Bishop had an extremely volatile temper and a chip on his shoulder, he was a skilled fighter, he seemed to enjoy hurting people and definitely didn’t mind killing them. The thought of spending an extended amount of time in the same building as the guy was nothing short of terrifying.

“It’s hard to say what makes him tick,” Alex said during the briefing – one of three briefings, technically, so it was possible for him to address every single person who worked at the institute. “Not until we’ve had a good long look at his background. For now, treat the situation as though you’re dealing with a sociopath. If you have to come into contact with him, do not engage him. Do not provoke him. Be polite. Don’t. Piss. Him. Off.”

I thought that it all should have gone without saying, but that was before I overheard the conversation a couple of the female Strikers were having about his looks one table over during dinner the next evening.

“Oh my god, really?” I said to Lenya. “I mean, _really?”_

“It’s probably the whole bad-boy-appeal thing,” Lenya said. “Although I didn’t know that applied to quasi-sociopaths.”

“The more you know.”

The conversation at the next table got graphic.

“They don’t seem to care if he murders them as long as they get to fuck him first,” I noted.

“Gross,” said Lenya. “Although it does make me a bit curious what he actually looks like. Like, do you think he is actually objectively hot, or is it all just the…I don’t know, the thrill of danger or whatever?”

“I kind of hope he isn’t hot,” I said, and motioned toward the other table. “Because if he is, we’ll be in for a lot more of that.”

*~*

As it turned out, Bishop was…well, fairly easy on the eyes, yes, but not on a level where I’d have called him shockingly attractive. He was of average height and as expected had the build of someone who could fight – muscular, but lithe rather than bulky. He had brown hair, closely cropped, and a face that betrayed he was in his early twenties at the most. His voice, which was for the most part completely ordinary, could drop into a low, dangerous purr that very clearly conveyed to whoever it was directed at that they had better start running for their life if they valued it at all.

I knew this because on Bishop’s fifteenth day at the institute, he directed it at me. It was the first day Alex had allowed him to eat in the mess hall with everyone else, and as luck would have it, he was in line directly behind me. No buffer, nothing, just a man who liked hurting people standing close enough to me that I could have elbowed him without taking a step first. By the time I grabbed a tray, my hands were shaking hard enough that I was worried I might end up spilling my food. I could see from the corner of my eye how completely unimpressed he looked as I fumbled the silverware, and when I ended up dropping my fork, he’d apparently had enough.

“You know,” he said in that terrifying, intimate purr, “where I come from, someone as pathetic as you wouldn’t even have made it to adulthood.”

My body went abruptly cold, like he’d injected ice into my veins instead of delivering an insult that should have been second-rate. I left the fork on the floor and concentrated on taking slow, measured steps forward as I clutched my tray like a lifeline. I felt numb and oddly disoriented. There was no way in hell I’d have been able to carry a tray full of food in this state, so I gave up on the idea and focused solely on crossing the room to the table Lenya and I usually sat at.

“Are you okay?” she asked, obviously alarmed when my empty tray clattered down on the table and I sank onto the bench with all the elegance of a deflating helium balloon. I heard her like I was standing in a tunnel, muddled and echo-y.

“I think,” I said, enunciating carefully, “I’m having the worst panic attack of my life.”

“What?” She stood and reached out to take me by the arm. “Do you want to go somewhere quiet?”

“Yes,” I rasped. “Might have to help me though, I can’t see all that well right now. Everything’s blurry and far away.”

Angel that she was, she led me from the room without questions, through half the building and into the comfortably familiar surroundings of the research wing. I curled up on my squeaky swivel-chair and hid my face.

“What happened, dear?” she asked carefully after several minutes of silence.

“I don’t understand,” it burst out of me, “I don’t get how it can translate into something sexual for anyone, I don’t get it! If I never feel that sort of terror again, it’ll be too soon.”

After a long pause, she said, “Bishop.”

I nodded.

“Did he threaten you? Do anything?”

“It wasn’t even that,” I said. “He just insulted me in the line because I was so panicked being near him, and it was like he put a gun to my head. I could barely even move.”

“I think that’s a perfectly normal response to something like that,” she opined. “To be honest, I might have actually fainted if it had been me. I…I don’t do fear well.”

“Does anyone?” I asked sourly.

“The Strikers.”

“Right, they all want to fuck him.” I shuddered. I felt a touch on my cheek and realized she’d reached for me, fingers brushing across my face in a warm and comforting way.

“I mean it. You have nothing to apologize for, your reaction was completely rational.”

“Why do I feel so pathetic then?” I asked bitterly.

“Probably because a lot of the people who work here aren’t even a little bit rational. I don’t think you can be, being a Striker. They all have a bit of a death wish for sure. Besides.” She leaned forward and fixated me with large, dark eyes. “You killed a werewolf, remember?”

“No, I _don’t_ remember,” I pointed out. “Maybe if I did, I’d be a bit more confident, but I don’t know how the hell I managed to kill that thing.”

“Okay, fair.” She sighed. “You could talk to the general about it?”

“He has better things to do than listen to me whine, Lenya. Besides, I don’t see what good that would do, I doubt he’d throw his hands up and agree to put the guy back in jail or something. Fuck.” I banged my forehead repeatedly against my kneecaps. It hurt.

“Want me to bring you a granola bar?” she offered.

“No thanks.” I sighed and sat on the chair like a regular person. “Otherwise I’ll be tempted to hole myself up in the lab all night with my numbers.”

“Anything new there, by the way?”

I shook my head. The more my heart rate calmed, the more I suddenly felt like crying. Part of it was because of what had happened in the mess hall, of course, but there was a good chunk to do with the obvious futility of my day-to-day struggles with the Veil data. It was a job that I should have been excited about – I was privy to secrets of a huge magnitude, I had the chance to contribute to a project that literally _dealt with another universe_ – and instead I was hating it more and more. That fact combined with the constant fear of running into Bishop now that Alex had allowed him to roam the institute made me begin to wish I’d never accepted Alex’ offer. It had seemed like such a no-brainer at the time. Now I was swimming in disillusionment.

“Want to bake something with me?” I asked.

Lenya looked mystified. “I…bake?”

“It’s a thing I do to calm down. Haven’t in a while, but I got some ingredients a couple of weeks ago and haven’t gotten around to using them yet.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “I won’t be of much help, though, I’ve literally never baked in my life.”

“We’ll do something simple. No fancy three-layer cakes.” I led her from the lab, feeling a little bit better at the prospect of creating edible goods.

“What do you know about Faerun?” I asked her as we assembled ingredients in the tiny little kitchen that was hidden in the Res basement. “Like, I only know the most basic stuff; Gargar wasn’t exactly a wellspring of information, and my research is about the membranes and the Veil and not anything actually _in_ Faerun, so I’ve focused on that and not on reading up on the place.”

“Understandable,” Lenya said. “That stuff stresses you out enough as it is.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Do we need, like, um,” Lenya cupped her hands in demonstration, “…measuring cups?”

“I’ve got a gram scale,” I said. “Measuring by weight is more accurate than by volume.”

“Okay.” She chewed her lip. “So, I mean, Faerun’s this really medieval place, I know that. They don’t have firearms or machinery – no cars, just horses – and a lot of dangerous creatures, so they do actually run around with swords and spears and crossbows to kill things like kobolds and goblins and ogres.”

“Ogres,” I said. “Seriously, _ogres?”_

“I think so, but don’t quote me on it.”

“Ogres,” I said. “Has one of those ever appeared on Earth?”

“No idea. But the thing is, we’ve had people come through before – there’s someone in London who’s from Faerun, I think – and they’re not like…him. They’re perfectly civilized. Friendly, cooperative. I mean, I’m sure it’s a massive shock, being suddenly in a whole different dimension, but the London woman has adapted just fine.”

“Great, they get the nice lady and we have the scary murderous guy.”

“Maybe they’d agree to a trade,” Lenya said. “Like, a blind one. We tell them we have the…uh, the… guy all the Strikers want to sleep with? God, how do you think we could advertise him?”

“You mean, list his many positive qualities?” I asked drily. “He’s very capable. With, you know, murder. Excellent intimidation skills. Projects an effortless aura of fear. If you buy now, we’ll throw in a free longbow for extra-efficient killing sprees.”

It was nice, how she was making me feel better so effortlessly, and how easily I could make her laugh.

“I’m not sure what we could put in the muffins,” I said. “Plain muffins are an affront to nature, but I don’t have any fruit or nuts of chocolate chips, because I’m an idiot.”

“I have some m&m’s in my room, would those work?”

“Yeah, absolutely,” I said, and she rushed to get them while I started on the measuring.

The tension and anxiety were finally beginning to fade, now that I no longer felt like I was about to be hunted down like an injured rabbit. It left me feeling drained. If I was honest with myself, I really just wanted to hide under a blanket. But there were muffins to be made, and that was enough to keep me going for now.

By the time Lenya got back, I’d assembled the dry ingredients. I traded her the m&m’s for the gram scale and pointed at the remaining ingredients.

“You’re just in time to crack some eggs.”

“Oh,” she said and looked alarmed. “What if I do it wrong?”

“Then we’ll get eggshell in the bowl and we’ll fish it back out.”

She relaxed very slightly. “Alright. How do I do that?”

I guided her through the egg-cracking and then handed her brown sugar, yogurt and milk to weigh.

“We’ll put in a splash of vanilla essence too,” I told her. “I like using an actual vanilla bean better, but they’re not that cheap, and it doesn’t matter so much for muffins. If I do something like panna cotta, I use the good stuff.”

“What’s panna cotta?”

“It’s a milk sort of…pudding. I’ll explain it another time.”

She stirred ingredients with child-like enthusiasm, greased and filled the muffin pan by herself, and then sat cross-legged in front of the little oven and watched as they baked. I joined her after a few minutes.

“So,” I said, doubling back to the topic that had kept me occupied despite my every attempt to chase it away. “Do you think Alex is going to let him stay?”

Lenya shrugged. “Might have something like a…like a three-strikes policy, you know? I’m not sure where he’ll send Bishop after that happens, but he does have the institute’s best interest at heart, so he won’t let him stay forever.”

“Three strikes are still three too many,” I said, feeling bitter. “Like, what’s even going to count as a strike? Killing someone? Or is the line drawn at maiming?”

“I really don’t know,” Lenya said. “But I’ll ask the general, if you like.”

“I’m not sure I want to know the answer,” I said. “I mean, he’s the one who called him a sociopath, and now we’re all going to be subjected to him. Great.”

“Not for long, I’m sure,” Lenya said. “He’s probably got a lot of information about the place that we could really use, but afterwards, there isn’t a point in having him take up space at the institute when he could be sent somewhere he can’t hurt anyone.”

“Hopefully,” I sighed, but couldn’t bring myself to believe it.


	4. Predator

**Predator**

_(an organism which is adapted and often highly specialized for hunting)_

“Fuck,” I said, barely resisting the temptation to throw something, which was important because the room I was currently pacing in was Lenya’s and not my own. “Just, _fuck!”_

“Well, we knew it was coming,” Lenya said with a resigned sigh.

I had no idea how she could be that calm about it. “Please tell me what Alex is smoking, because this is just ridiculous. Eugene up in Chem is working with a broken wrist, Steph fucking _quit_ because of him, he’s causing property damage left and right and terrorizing the place, and instead of deciding there is no way this is going to work out, Alex decides to keep him on permanently? That is _bullshit!”_

“Trust me, I get it,” said Lenya. “But I’ve heard the general talk about the situation, and it made me realize – what else should he have done? Bishop can’t just be let loose at the world without any sort of tether, he can’t even be sent back to jail because he’s a walking security leak. Making him a Striker… it makes sense. Combat is something he knows, something he’s good at, it’s literally the only place where he’d be an asset.” She sighed deeply and fell back onto her bed. “Trust me when I say I hate this too, but it does make sense.”

I stared morosely at the ceiling. “Maybe I should quit.”

Her head turned lightning-fast. “Don’t you _dare,_ Verena!”

“Lenya, my work is pointless, I’m not contributing shit, and there’s a sociopath on the loose. It’s not exactly a dream job at this point.”

She shook her head. “You’re not a quitter,” she said. “I know you’re not. You can be stubborn.”

“I can be _extremely_ stubborn if I actually care about proving something, but I can’t even be bothered at this point,” I said.

Her gaze was sad and resigned. “Give it a little while longer?” she asked. “For me, if nothing else? I don’t want to go back to having no friends.”

It wasn’t fair, putting that on me, but I knew she wasn’t purposely trying to manipulate me. And I knew it was the truth, that I was the only one she ever spent time around.

“Fine,” I grumbled. “I’ll try to make it work.”

“Thank you,” she sighed and looked honestly relieved.

“But if some other bullshit happens that I can’t deal with, all bets are off.”

*~*

Luckily for my continued sanity and Lenya’s continued social life, the Strikers tended to keep to the prism, which meant all of the main building served as a buffer while I was in the research wing. Therefore, Bishop was suddenly much less of a concern than I had expected. Gargar, however, made more than up for it by harassing me about my lack of progress. I shoved graphs and calculations his way to try and appease him, which worked at first, but less and less as time went on. He started coming by my desk more frequently, as though to check I wasn’t just reading romance novels instead of working – or something of the sort. It was distracting and annoying, and my level of frustration just kept mounting.

Maybe it was the emotional pressure cooker I had become that was the reason for my breakthrough, maybe it was just my sheer tenacity in working through the numbers in all sorts of pseudo-random ways. Either way, I started to realize how the outputs of all three instruments were related.

“This is useless,” was what Gargar said after I presented him with my findings. “None of these units make sense, first of all.”

“Of course they don’t,” I snapped, “because what I’m looking at hasn’t ever been quantified, and nobody _gave_ me any units for the instruments’ output I’m working with, so I had to make do with what already exists. Hence Hertz and Pascal.”

“It doesn’t make _sense,”_ he said, snapped the file shut and handed it back to me. “Come back when you can present this in a way that makes sense.”

It was actually making perfect sense, but Gargar had apparently become so used to me not producing anything of value that he couldn’t leave his reservations at the door for long enough to read through my report with an open mind. Because I had no idea how I could have fixed the issue with the units, and because units on the whole mattered very little to my research, I simply kept working on figuring out what my discovery meant in a practical sense.

As far as I could tell, the entire thing boiled down to the pressure in the Veil affecting the membrane. When the pressure dropped below a certain number, the vibrations of the membrane often jumped to an entirely different frequency range and became far less regular. It was difficult to know how to apply principles of physics to anything inter-dimensional, but I thought that there was a distinct possibility that decreased Veil pressure could cause the membranes of the two dimensions to drift together – for lack of a better description – and come into contact enough to affect each other. If I was correct, it might have been the first step in being able to travel between dimensions deliberately.

I really wanted a second set of instruments outside of the institute so that I could find out whether the membrane interaction was confined by physical location on Earth, but there was no way I’d have been allocated funding unless Gargar thought what I was doing was vitally important, and probably not even then, so I shelved that idea for the time being and set to gaining more evidence for my theory and trying to figure out how the Pond-Apparatus and the measurements it took fit into the big picture. It proved to be more than difficult, because it all felt like trying to figure out a knitting pattern in a pitch-black room while wearing boxing gloves. I simply had no clues I could work with, no starting point that had a chance of going anywhere.

While I made little progress answering the Pond-Apparatus question, now that I knew the existence of the thread that was membrane-interaction, I managed to make a series of smaller discoveries and deductions related to it. Among others, I came to the realization that membrane-interactions and temporary rips or tears in the Veil that things fell through were not the same thing, and perhaps not even all that closely related. I’d managed to establish a correlation between people falling through the Veil and large-scale atypical power outages of undetermined cause. There were still far too many unknowns to be certain, but it was better than nothing.

One Friday afternoon, I figured out that the three data points I had – the last three times researchers had been able to timestamp someone or some _thing_ coming through in a three hundred mile radius, and the _only_ three cases since the instruments had been collecting data – correlated with not only massive increases in membrane vibration but also very unusual output from the Pond-Apparatus. It was the first time I’d been able to connect that output to _anything,_ and I worked feverishly to make sure I wasn’t imagining things.

When I had finally finished running the last few statistics, I looked up from my desk for the first time in hours and realized with a start that it was almost two in the morning. I resolved that the next day, I’d make a final attempt to show Gargar the value of what I was doing, and if that didn’t change anything, I would quit there and then. Yawning, I collected papers and made my way up to street level and toward the skywalk that connected the research wing to the residential building. I hadn’t quite gotten there when movement in the shadows scared the living daylights out of me.

“Excuse me,” I said firmly, and I thought I was doing a decent enough job of pretending that I was calm, but that lasted exactly until I realized that the person emerging from the shadows like a predator stalking its prey was Bishop.

Bishop, with what looked very much like a bottle of vodka in his hand.

Oh, fucking hell.

He had wolf eyes, I realized with a shiver of fear. I didn’t know how I’d never noticed it before, but his eyes were a light amber color, almost yellow. I didn’t even have words for the level of unnerving that was.

“Little girls shouldn’t be wandering alone at night,” he said, taking another step toward me. I frantically tried to figure out if there was any way to get away, a fire alarm, anything, and then faintly wondered how far I’d get if I bolted. He noticed, of course, and smirked. “Try it,” he said.

I stood there, frozen and choking on my own heartbeat, and he just kept closing in. Two steps away.

“Go on,” he said, voice almost a murmur. “Try it.”

It was impossible to figure out which would lead to a worse outcome for me – trying to run or staying put. I wasn’t under any delusions that I might actually get away, but I tried to choose the one that would piss him off slightly less.

I ran.

He let me get about twelve of fourteen steps – and there was no question he was _letting_ me – before catching up, and it was so dark and he was so fast that I couldn’t actually understand how he took me down, only that he did, and I ended up half-sitting against the wall with him crouched over me. He had my wrist in an iron grip.

He sighed. “Pathetic,” he said. “Really, _really_ pathetic.”

Well, no shit. Despite the fact I was drowning in fear, I managed to feel faintly baffled that he had expected anything else.

“Do you know what we do to pathetic little girls where I come from?” he asked conversationally and took a drink. The sound of liquid sloshing around a bottle filled my ears and merged with a faint buzzing sound I hadn’t realized was there. My body was going numb, starting at the wrist he held so tightly. At this rate, I would faint, and I wasn’t sure whether maybe I wanted to.

“I asked you a question.” Vodka-laced breath hit my face.

I had a pretty good idea of what he meant. Once again, I wasn’t sure if answering or staying silent was a better option, and eventually I parted trembling lips, but that was as far as I got. No sound came out.

He sighed. “Boring. Pathetic and _boring._ What the fuck are you even good for.” He shifted, and I pressed my thighs together on reflex, getting a hard, bitter laugh for my trouble. “Is that what you think I’ll do? You’re not worth the effort. But then, nothing here is, is it?”

He swayed sideways and sat down heavily next to me, letting go of my wrist in the process. As he drank again, I tried to figure out what the fuck was happening and came up blank.

“Guess I deserve it,” he said, slurring a bit, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall. “I tried to kill her, you know. Well, get her killed, really. Not sure if it worked. Not sure if I’m hoping it did.”

Was he…rambling drunkenly about some woman now? What was I supposed to do with that?

“Everything is so fucking complicated here,” he said. “When you kill someone, things get _more_ complicated instead of less. Why is that?”

When I didn’t respond, he turned his head to look at me. It was so abrupt that I flinched, and he sighed and rolled his eyes. “Not going to rape you,” he muttered, and drank again.

Well, that was…encouraging. Sort of.

And then he flung out his arm and smashed the bottle into the wall right next to my head.

The movement had me turn my head away on reflex, so at least no glass shards got into my eyes, but I didn’t have time to be glad about that because the next moment he had one hand in my hair and brutally pulled back my head to bare my throat. Then he pressed something sharp against it – glass.

Shit.

I finally started to fight when he began sawing through the skin, scratching and kicking and screaming, earning myself a hand over my mouth and a heavy body on top of me to keep me still. I tried to make use of whatever little movement I still had and squirmed as best I could while also trying to bite his hand because I was _not_ going to make this easy for him, terrified or not. Faintly, I realized I was crying. I managed to get a hand free and clawed him across the face, which caused a gasp of surprise and – hopefully – pain, and for him to fall sideways. I scrambled up, but he’d already managed to grab my hair again and pulled me right back down.

I screamed. There was the sound of more breaking glass and then his other hand was back over my mouth, sans shard, and I could taste blood – presumably mine.

“Shhh,” he said.

I kicked him, and he laughed. I kicked harder.

“Not going to do much, but points for effort,” he murmured against my ear. Then, suddenly, something hard slammed against my temple and caused my senses to blank out.

By the time the haze finally lifted, he was gone. I spent some time just lying there listening to my own raspy breathing before raising a trembling hand to my throat and feeling it burn as I did, feeling nothing but torn-open flesh and slick, tacky blood beneath my fingertips. I didn’t think he’d done a life-threatening amount of damage, but it was still an open, gaping wound and I couldn’t see how bad it was and that scared me so very much.

*~*

I didn’t tell the doctor who took care of me at Medical anything about what had happened to me, even though he warned me that he would have to report it to Alex, and even though I got the impression he could have made a pretty good guess. I wasn’t sure if I was still in numb shock or just pragmatic, but I simply figured there would be little point in reporting the entire thing. It wasn’t the worst Bishop had done, and he was still here, so what was one more incident on his record?

I couldn’t sleep one bit after I returned to my room – not that that was in any way surprising – so I just sat in my bed and tried to process and figure out exactly what I would do next. I was so emotionally exhausted that the thought of quitting my job right that day didn’t feel like it was a possibility, and I doubted I had anywhere near enough strength to get into it with Gargar, either.

Some time after the sun rose, I fell into a fitful half-sleep, and by the time I woke up, it was nearly noon and there was a frantic knocking at my door.

“What?” I croaked, bleary-eyed, when I was face to face with Lenya.

She stared for a long moment and then said, “You look like absolute hell. Are you sick?”

“I wish,” I grumbled.

“What does that mean? Never mind, explain later. General Simoni wants to see you, and I don’t think it’s for anything good.”

I couldn’t help but release a huge sigh. “Great. Awesome. When?”

“As soon as possible,” she said with a sympathetic grimace. “I’m so sorry, Verena, I…what in the world happened to your throat?”

“Funny story,” I said, and began the search for a turtleneck sweater to cover up the stiff bandage.

We walked together in silence. I was thankful that Lenya could take a hint from me avoiding the question and didn’t dig further about what happened to me, since having to answer Alex would be bad enough. When we got to his office, however, Gargar was there as well, which I hadn’t expected.

“General,” I greeted him numbly. The formality felt appropriate for some reason.

“Verena,” Alex said, looking grave, and then he nodded his thanks to Lenya, who stepped out of the room and gently closed the door behind her. Then he directed a frown my way that was tinged with actual concern. “You don’t look too good. Have you been sick?”

“No,” I said, “no, I’m great. I do want to quit, though, so we can probably just speed right past all of…” I gestured toward Gargar. “That.”

Gargar made a noise of protest, but Alex sent him a quelling look and then studied me silently for some time, as though trying to get a handle on some complex puzzle. “Why?” he asked eventually.

“Do I really have to explain all of it?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“It isn’t going to change anything though, so I’d really rather not.”

“Tough.” He crossed his arms and studied me some more.

The room was silent apart from a clock ticking away the seconds audibly somewhere nearby. Then, Gargar burst out with, “This is exactly what I’ve been telling you, General. She isn’t interested in putting effort into _anything,_ especially her job, and I just can’t justify spending –”

“Oh, fuck you,” I said, because apparently, I _could_ put effort into fighting back if I was pushed far enough. “You don’t even _look_ at the reports I give you, let alone try to understand them, so don’t you dare lecture me on effort, you goddamn hypocrite.”

Alex’ eyebrows rose impressively high as unflattering red-purplish blotches slowly started to appear on Gargar’s face.

“I assure you, General, I read all of her reports with due diligence –”

“Yes, thank you,” Alex interrupted him and made a ‘settle down’ gesture his way. “I know your side of the story, Edgar, but I need to hear from her as well. Would you mind fetching one or two of those reports for me, Verena?”

“No problem,” I said, because even though I was leaving and this shit didn’t even matter any longer, it would be satisfying to take Gargar down with me. Petty, maybe, but enormously satisfying.

It took me maybe ten minutes to hurry down to the lab and back, and even though there was bright sunlight outside, I couldn’t help but feel uneasy walking the corridors on my own, anxiety bubbling in the pit of my stomach all the way.

God, I hated Bishop so much.

By the time I was back in Alex’ office, my hands were shaking. He looked at them sharply when I handed him the last three reports I’d written, but remained silent. It took me a moment to realize Gargar was no longer there – presumably he’d decided he had better shit to do than listen to me bitching about him.

“Would you mind staying while I have a look at these?” Alex asked, gesturing to one of the comfortable-looking chairs off to the side. “In case I have questions.”

I sat without comment and proceeded to stare at my hands for long minutes, trying to ignore the annoying ticking clock and the occasional rustling of paper, trying to think about anything but the previous night. Eventually, Alex cleared his throat.

“Was this the area you asked to work in?” he wanted to know.

“Nope,” I said with a heaping of fake cheer.

“Why didn’t you come to me about that?”

“Because,” I said, finally looking up, “Gargar seemed the type to take offense to that, and I was trying to avoid getting off to an even worse start that I already had.”

The corner of his mouth twitched up. “You’ve been talking to Lenya.”

“Yes,” I said. “So what? She’s the most decent human being in this entire institute.”

“She is,” Alex agreed. “And I didn’t mean it was a bad thing. She thinks highly of you.”

“Oh,” I said, taken aback at the easy compliment. “Well, thanks.”

“Thank her, not me,” he said somewhat absently as he began to flip through the first report again, eventually tapping his finger at something. “Why in the world is this thing called the Pond-Apparatus?”

“Because,” I said, refusing to feel even the slightest bit embarrassed about it, “the _thing_ didn’t have a name when I was assigned to deal with it, and nobody could tell me what it measured, or how, or really anything at all apart from the fact that there was a large stack of numbers it had produced. When I actually started graphing the numbers, they reminded me of a calm pond surface that occasionally gets hit by a pebble, which causes ripples. So I named it after that because it was all I had to go on.”

“Hm,” he said.

“And because it amused me,” I added. “And also because why the hell not.”

“Hm,” he repeated, frowning. “That’s all you were given? Raw numbers?”

“Yep.”

“You wrote here that you weren’t sure whether different physical locations on Earth are connected to different parts of the membrane.”

“Yes,” I said. “The concept is so abstract that I can’t even begin to guess if that’s the case or not.”

“Have you considered simply testing it?”

“Well, obviously, but I’d need a second set of instruments to compare output, and Gargar just plain laughed at me the one time I brought it up.”

Alex sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “What was his reasoning?”

“Um.” I tried to think back. “Nothing, really, just that it was hilarious I’d expect him to allocate funding to something like that.”

“He’s used to dealing with more concrete things,” Alex said. “And he’s very good at that, but I think he’s having a difficult time seeing the potential applications of this.”

“I literally wrote those in capital letters into the reports,” I pointed out.

“Yes, I saw.”

“He’s never going to treat me fairly if he can’t grasp that, which means I have minimal resources to do the job I’m here to do, and I’m not going to work in conditions that are so utterly stacked against me.”

“Yes,” Alex said and gave me a nod. “I understand.”

“Really,” I said, skeptically.

“Yes, really. I wasn’t born into this position, you know.”

“Fair point. But it doesn’t change the fact that my working conditions are shit.”

“Right,” he said, straightened the papers, tucked them back into the folder I’d put them in, and sharply snapped said folder shut. “Now then. What happened to your throat?”

My heart sank, and I could feel my shoulders stiffen. My gaze dropped to the floor as I produced the delightful understatement of, “It’s just a cut.”

“Hell of a cut. By what?”

“Glass shard.”

“Who did the cutting?”

I lifted my gaze so I could give him a dead-eyed stare. “Would you like to wager a guess?”

He inhaled with deliberation. “Ah.”

“Yes,” I said, because suddenly the sarcastic cheer was back in full force. “That’s _almost_ what I said when it happened.”

Once again, silence descended like a heavy blanket and stayed for a good eight to ten minutes as I waited for Alex to finish fiddling with paperwork and say whatever he was clearly gearing up to say – some sort of final verdict, probably. I crossed my arms because suddenly I felt cold, despite the warm turtleneck, and I had to grit my teeth because one ill-advised turn of my head had set the wound at my throat to burning.

“I’d like you to give me a chance to change some things around,” he eventually broke the silence. “See if we can improve those working conditions. Frankly, I’d hate to lose you at this point. I’ve been trying to find someone who can handle this level of…” He gestured at the folder of reports with a frown. “This level of abstract, of weird – whatever you’d like to call it; you know what I mean. We’ve had quite a few people try to make sense of it, but you’re the first one who’s ever gotten anywhere.”

“If Gargar has treated all of them like he treats me, I’m not even surprised,” I couldn’t help but mutter.

“It might be a factor,” Alex agreed. “Although I really do wish you’d have felt comfortable bringing your concerns to me before today. I’m capable of subtlety and diplomacy, believe it or not.”

I winced. “Yes, sir. Although I haven’t actually agreed to stay yet, you know.”

“I do know,” he said. “I’d assumed you’d want to hear something more concrete first.”

“That would be lovely, yes.”

“I’ll need a little while to figure out the details, but ideally, I’d like to take you away from Edgar’s supervision and give you your own space.”

“What kind of space?” I asked carefully.

“There’s an area we’re currently not utilizing, in the prism. It was constructed for containing chemical and biological hazards, but Faerun has rather less of them than originally assumed, so the smaller space we’ve got in research serves the purpose well enough.”

“In the prism,” I said.

“Yes, I know.” He sighed. “I’m still working on that part. The lab itself is extremely safe out of the way on the top floor, if that helps.”

“Not a lot,” I said honestly.

He rested his folded hands on his desk. “May I ask you a couple of question about what happened?”

I huffed out a very annoyed breath. “Only if it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Is the cut on your throat the only injury, or are there more?”

“Just the one,” I said. “Unless you want to count bruises and trauma – sorry to be all dramatic, but it’s true.”

“I know. I promise I’m not being disparaging. I just want to get all of the facts.”

“Thanks for that, I guess.”

“Was he drunk?”

I huffed out a breath of bleak amusement. “Quite.”

Alex then did a rather un-General-y thing I hadn’t expected in the least: He put his bent arms on his desk, buried his head in them, and groaned in obvious frustration.

“I take it this isn’t the first time,” I said, torn between alarmed concern and faint amusement.

“Not even close,” Alex’ muffled voice informed me. “I’m trying my damndest, but it’s impossible to get through to him.”

“Lenya said you can’t put him in jail.”

“Well, no. As long as he’s this much of a loose cannon, he can’t leave the institute at all. He’d be one giant leak of classified information. We’ve got a couple of cells here for short-term containment, but he could probably break out of one of those.”

“What happens if someone else who works here breaks the law enough for some sort of long-term punishment?”

“There’s a facility for high-risk prisoners who have knowledge of sensitive or classified information and the like, and, yes, _technically_ I could send Bishop to that. But for him, it would be a life-long stay, because I wouldn’t be able to rationalize accepting him back, and they _literally_ could not send him anywhere else afterward.”

I stared at the top of Alex’ head, currently facing my way, and clenched my jaw. “Sorry, you’re gonna need to explain to me exactly what the problem with that is.”

He lifted his head and studied me. “He deserves an honest effort on my part to make this work.”

“No, he doesn’t,” I said bluntly.

Alex hesitated for a moment and then nodded and stood. “Give me a moment,” he said, leaving the room through an unassuming door off to the side behind his desk. I had no idea what was behind it, but it took less than a minute for him to be back, and he was holding a thin, worn-looking hardcover book, bound in dark green. It had no writing on the outside at all.

“I highly doubt that this is going to change your mind on any of this, and that isn’t why I’m giving it to you,” he said. “But I thought it might help you understand why I’m saying that, and you do very much deserve to understand. There are conditions attached before I can give it to you, though.”

I felt a bit lost. “Conditions?”

“I’m giving it to you in a lockbox. You have to keep it safe and hidden. You can’t tell anyone that you have it or even that it exists, and you certainly can’t show it to anyone or talk about the contents to anyone but me. And you absolutely _cannot let Bishop find out_ about it under any circumstances.”

I only frowned when he took a box that was only slightly bigger than the book out of a drawer, placed the book inside, then walked over to me and held it out. “What the hell _is_ it?”

“You know about the Veil letting through abstracts, right?”

“The thing with people on Earth sometimes dreaming about things that happen over there?”

“Precisely. There are people who are more sensitive to it than others, and the woman who wrote this is one of the best Receivers that we know of. We’ve got thirty-something volumes of hers, all full of detailed dream summaries and fragments that are all more than likely about real events. We’ve got more, from others, but this particular volume is the one I’d like you to look at. Chapter twenty-three.”

I stared at the box and slowly reached out to take it.

“When you’re finished, and you’ve had some time to think about all of this, come see me,” Alex instructed. “By that point, I should have something figured out.”


	5. Vector

**Vector**

_(a quantity having direction as well as magnitude)_

Alex was right – what I read didn’t change my mind about Bishop or make me magically sympathetic to him, but it did give me a better understanding of some things and a good reminder that people rarely came out of the womb as evil, sadistic bastards.

Bishop’s life story was one fucked-up mess.

He wasn’t the only one who’d ever been born to terrible parents, a drunk father and abusive mother, nor was he the only one who’d received the designation ‘problem child’ before even being old enough to understand what that meant. He certainly wasn’t unique in being orphaned at a young age, either. And I supposed that back before orphanages became a thing, it probably hadn’t been all that rare for a child like that to be brought up through a combined yet half-assed effort of the people in the tiny village they called home.

I was less able to wrap my mind around the fact that a village like that might throw their hands up in resignation and decide to _sell_ a child before said child had even reached the age of ten. It was when bile started rising in my throat, and the entire thing only got worse from here.

I realized soon that in Faerun, which was so much more medieval and, for lack of a better word, _wild,_ than Earth, there seemed to be a lot of bizarre shit going on, and included in that was apparently some kind of brotherhood of _assassins_ who made it a habit to kidnap or buy children in order to break their will via torture and train them, and…great. Now I was starting to feel bad for a guy who’d sliced my throat open not twenty-four hours ago. No wonder he was a living maelstrom of psychological damage and PTSD.

At least I hadn’t been the one to _dream_ all the things I was now reading. Silver linings, I supposed.

Most of the story – if one could really call it that – was a jumbled mix of brutality in all its many forms, but a few things stood out. I was unwillingly impressed by the fact that Bishop had resisted some of the brainwashing and had eventually – the book didn’t specify a number, but it seemed like at least six or seven years had passed – managed to escape the place. During said escape, he’d burned his home village to the ground – for good measure, apparently, but the book once again didn’t go into detail – and nearly died in the process. At least a couple of years of simply surviving in the forest and staying under the proverbial radar were followed by mercenary work and smuggling, and then he’d met a woman – which was the point when my brain flashed back to the drunken ramblings I’d witnessed the night before. The book wasn’t very clear on what exactly had happened between them, but it had been unquestionably messy, and he _had_ tried to get her killed, just like he’d said. The chapter ended with her fighting for her life against something the book didn’t bother describing, and with Bishop trying to get away from the carnage, and then –

I snapped the book shut and then looked up and said very precisely, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

*~*

“Didn’t expect to see you back quite this soon,” Alex said when I walked into his office once again the next day.

“Me either,” I said and didn’t bother hiding how beyond annoyed I was.

“Did you…” Alex frowned and studied my face more closely. “What?”

“Why wasn’t I told about the fact that Faerun has magic? I mean, werewolves, sure, but that isn’t the same as ‘I wave a wand and turn myself invisible’ and that sort of thing.”

“Well, frankly, I assumed that Edgar had mentioned it to you, but considering that we know close to nothing about it, and that it isn’t your area of research, I wouldn’t say it was absolutely vital for you to know.”

“Yes, except I think it might be what the Pond-Apparatus is measuring,” I told him.

Alex stared at me blankly, blinked, and then said hesitantly, “Interesting.”

I sank onto one of the chairs in front of his desk with a sigh and pulled out the dark green book. “It’s what I was working on the night before last,” I explained. “Why I was in the lab so late. The last few times people fell through the Veil in this area, the Apparatus recorded…well, if we’re still going with the pebble in a pond analogy, it kind of seemed like our pond was hit by an entire rockslide. There was a _lot_ of disturbance. And if the book is correct, there was some manner of massive magical…explosion or backlash or whatever, that happened right before Bishop ended up here.”

“So, you think that the large amount of magic created the tear in the Veil?”

“Or the violence of the explosion, or…something.” I threw up my hands. “I’m wildly speculating here because, as usual, I haven’t got any information to work with.”

“That would be why so much about the Veil seems to be one-sided,” Alex noted. “Why things only seem to pass through from there to us, not the other way around.”

“I’m actually not sure about that. Obviously, we don’t have magic, but there’s something else I find interesting – there were power outages at or near the places where those people came out. Saline County was the last one.”

Alex looked skeptical. “Well yes, that’s where Bishop was found, but I feel the need to point out that power outages aren’t exactly rare.”

“I understand that, I’m not an idiot, but all three of these have undetermined causes and behaved in an atypical fashion. I haven’t spent too much time looking into exactly _how_ atypical, or what that means, but I do think there’s a chance that this has some significance.”

He did that carefully-studying-my-face thing he liked to do for a long moment, then said, “Give me your best guess as to what that means.”

“I haven’t the foggiest. I told you, three points of data isn’t anywhere near enough to work with.”

“You misunderstand me. I don’t mean ‘be all scientific about it’, I mean that you should tell me the first wild speculation that your instinct seems to like.”

“That’s…not how science works, Alex,” I said.

“Don’t care. Do it.”

I rolled my eyes but obeyed anyway. “I think Faerun’s magic is affecting our electromagnetic waves.”

“Alright,” he said, “keep going. Just dream something up. Get creative.”

 _“Seriously,”_ I said. My little science-y mind was starting to weep. “Fine. Here’s some unsubstantiated bullshit: Maybe our electromagnetic waves affect their magic right back. Maybe it’s possible that they both affect the Veil in a similar way, and that large bursts of electromagnetic…something, I don’t fucking know, maybe like an EMP, but my point it that a sufficiently large electromagnetic burst or explosion could be causing the Veil to tear from our side.”

“Huh,” said Alex. “Fascinating.”

“Yes, fascinating. Also complete bullshit.”

“You sure?” he asked.

“Of course I’m sure. I have far better chances of winning the lottery than predicting trans-dimensional physics phenomena through random guessing.”

“But what if it isn’t random?” he asked.

“What, you think I have some sort of subconscious…oh, _fucking hell.”_ I stood and slammed the book down on his desk just about as hard as I could. “This? This is what you think this is? That I’m some kind of science-related… _Receiver?”_

“Yes,” he said, picking up the book and looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“That’s got to be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Doesn’t make it wrong. Look, the first time we met, when I was in your kitchen, I asked you if you had a weird feeling about what you went through. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah,” I said weakly. _“That’s_ what that was about?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you explain this before now?”

“Mostly because of the way you’re reacting right now.” He gave a pointed nod in my general direction. “If I’d said that a couple of months ago, you’d have declared me a lunatic.”

“You _are_ a lunatic.”

“But now I’m a lunatic who is going to challenge you to disprove what you just told me.”

“To…disprove?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “Any way you can. Shouldn’t be hard, right?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Well, I’m not actually hiding it, so I’m afraid that your display of stellar perception skills isn’t quite as impressive as you were perhaps hoping.”

“Can I have that back?” I asked, pointing at the book.

“What for?”

“I’d like to smack you upside the head with it.”

He gave me a grin that was surprisingly fond. “You know, I’m not sure it has occurred to you, but you’re sitting in front of someone who isn’t only a four-star army general but also your current boss, and you’ve by now cursed at him at least five times, called him an idiot and a lunatic, explained to him how science works, and threatened to assault him with a book.”

I slunk back into my chair with a small, mortified “oh” and a sudden horrified realization of how completely out of line I’d been during this entire conversation. Somehow, I hadn’t quite lost the ‘I’m quitting anyway, fuck all this’ mindset I’d brought into the room the day before, and I hadn’t even noticed.

I cleared my throat with some effort. “Um. Sorry.”

“I suppose it also hasn’t occurred to you that I could have reprimanded you for those things at any point.”

I frowned and blinked at him. “Not really, no.”

“Right. Let me be clear.” He leaned forward a slight bit. “You’re good at what you do, and I think you could be even better, _far_ better, but in order to do that, you need support and trust you haven’t been getting. That’s my fault, and I’m sorry.”

This wasn’t where I’d assumed he had been going with this, and I was starting to feel confused. “I…thanks?”

“You’re not military, I’m well aware of that. I don’t think you _should_ be military, it doesn’t suit you, and therefore I don’t feel bound to insist on any sort of propriety the way I would otherwise.”

“So, you’re saying I can…swear at you?”

“As long as we’re in private, yes. In private, you can also call me an idiot or a lunatic if you think it’s applicable, though I really would prefer Alex.”

It was all a little much. I hadn’t expected that kind of warmth from him, not after all the other bullshit I’d had to deal with lately, and part of me wanted to hug him. I did think that might go a little too far, however, so I gave him a tremulous smile instead and whispered, “Thank you”.

He returned the smile. “Feel free to go to the lab to check on your instruments or whatever else it is you might do there, but don’t feel obligated to work, alright? I’ll get things set in motion to move you to the new space.”

“Which I still haven’t technically agreed to go to,” I felt compelled to point out.

“Right.” He looked down at the dark green book. “Well, do you think you can handle it? Him?”

“I don’t think any better of him because of what I read,” I felt the need to point out. “And I’m already half-convinced that at some point in the future I will utterly regret saying this, but yes, I can do this, provided you communicate to him in whatever manner you deem most effective that he needs to leave me the fuck alone.”

“I will,” he agreed. “Don’t worry, I’m reasonably certain his broken heart will heal in time.”

“Cool,” I muttered. “I’ll be sure to learn how to shoot so I can put a bullet in it.”

Alex froze for a moment, then asked, “Do you want to?”

“Um… _what?”_ My voice rose at least an octave.

“To know how to shoot. Not Bishop, obviously. In general.”

“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “I’m a bit too worried I’ll end up using it.”

“Maybe not, then,” he said. “I won’t force you. But if you change your mind, let me know. I’ll get someone to train you.”

“Thank you,” I said, and tried to convey how honestly grateful I was in those two words.

“You never did say what you thought, by the way.” He pointed at the book.

“Well, like I told you, it didn’t change my mind about him.”

He nodded. “I’d have been surprised if it had.”

“But I suppose I do _kind of_ understand why you feel you should give him a chance to not spend the rest of his life in prison. Kind of. But I think you’re going to get to the point where you can’t justify trying to help him at the expense of everyone else’s health and well-being. I don’t think he’ll see sense before that happens, if at all.”

Alex nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about, too.”

“Right, well, I don’t really want to spend any more time thinking about this, if I’m honest. I’m going to go to my room now and eat a bunch of chocolate and read a geometry book or something.”

“You’re very strange,” Alex said, matter-of-fact. “I approve.”

*~*

When I got back to my room, Lenya was waiting outside it, looking unhappy and worried.

“I feel like you suddenly hate me,” she said.

“I really don’t.”

“Why are you avoiding me, then?”

“I haven’t been.” I unlocked my door and wordlessly held it open for her. She took the invitation but still looked irritated with me, which was new. Lenya was normally so sweet and non-confrontational that this mood stuck out like a sore thumb.

“But something’s really wrong, and I’m worried. Can you at least tell me you’re fine? You don’t even need to say what happened if you don’t want to, but –”

I was so sick of talking about this, and that wasn’t her fault, but still. “Bishop put a glass shard to my throat and started cutting.”

The blood drained from her face so fast that I worried she might faint, and I realized I was _really_ glad that the assault had happened to me and not Lenya.

“Do you know how to shoot a gun?” I asked.

“I…what?” She sank down on my bed when her legs began to shake.

“Maybe we should learn how to shoot, together.”

“Oh,” she said, swallowed hard, and looked up at my throat. “Jesus.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m okay, I promise. The cut’s pretty big, I won’t lie – more than six inches across – but nothing vital is damaged. Otherwise I’d already be packing my things.”

She looked very surprised. “You’re staying?”

“Against my better judgment.” I sighed and sat next to her. “Alex had to make some concessions before I agreed to it.”

“Good.”

I nodded and stood right back up. “Do you want some chocolate? I need some chocolate. And, as luck would have it, I have some chocolate.”

“I would love some chocolate, thanks.” She wrinkled her nose. “Why do we keep repeating the word ‘chocolate’?”

“It’s a good word,” I opined. My secret candy stash was newly filled, which I was extremely glad for, because I was not about to go all the way to the commissary right now.

“True.” She smiled when I threw a Twix her way. “I have news, by the way. I’ve been meaning to tell you for like two days, and I haven’t had a chance.”

“Oh?”

“I talked to the general and brought up what you said to me once, how it was confusing that I don’t have an actual job title and description – which I think was fine when I was new, I had no clue what I wanted to do or how to do it, but I decided I’d like more structure, and I’d like to know what’s expected of me so I can know if I’m doing a good job and don’t always have to worry that I’m not doing enough to pull my weight. You know?”

“Yes,” I said.

“So the general offered to make me his full-time, official aide. We’re working out a list of responsibilities together, so it won’t actually be too different from what I do now, but it’s just all more official, and nicer!”

She beamed at me, and I smiled back. I liked seeing her happy. Now if only I could manage to be happy as well.


	6. Periphery

**Periphery**

_(the outer limits or edge of an area or object)_

A week and a half later, I moved my work materials and instruments to the containment lab in the prism. It was quite spacious for a single person, and I, who’d been crammed into a corner in the research lab for almost four months, didn’t quite know what to do with that. There were plenty of things I had little use for, like the safety shower and biosafety cabinet, and the fact that one wall was entirely glass confused me. But it was a brand new never-used lab space, so I couldn’t complain.

Then there was the fact that I suddenly had my own – frighteningly large – budget. I had no experience with that sort of thing and felt kind of like a kid being given pocket money for the first time in their life. I had no clue what to spend it on and was worried I would make the wrong choices, but Lenya sat down with me and proved unexpectedly capable at helping me plan and prioritize.

“What did I ever do before I met you?” I asked

“Suffer?” she suggested with a shy grin and ducked head.

“Probably.”

She grinned more widely and spun around in my swivel chair. “You should get a comfortable couch,” she suggested. “That way, if you ever stay in the lab too late and don’t feel safe walking back to Res, you can sleep here.”

“That’s actually not a bad idea,” I said thoughtfully.

“I know.”

The main three instruments that I worked with were moved to the new lab with extreme care, but Alex had also arranged for a second set to be manufactured, and he was planning to ship them to a small facility he had secured near San Francisco after I’d calibrated them, so I could receive data from a different location and compare it to my own. Part of me really couldn’t believe that things had gotten so much better in such a short amount of time.

And all it had taken was for me to get my throat cut.

Another thing that was refreshing was to be away from Gargar’s passive-aggressive style of supervision. It made me a lot less stressed and a lot more productive. Because I had to wait for data from San Francisco to continue research on possible patterns to membrane contact, I soon decided to focus my efforts on two other areas for the time being – testing if any electromagnetic waves I produced in the lab affected the Veil or membranes in any way, and figuring out what exactly the Pond-Apparatus output could tell me about magic. The former gave Alex more than one headache.

“You need _what?”_ he asked incredulously during one of our now-regular meetings.

“I need to be able to produce high doses of gamma rays.”

“You cannot have a particle accelerator!”

“Okay, but how about radioactive iodine? Can I have that?”

“Not a chance.”

“Radiocesium?”

“No!”

I sighed. “So, you don’t really want portals then?”

“Not if they include high doses of gamma rays, no. How about this: you try everything you can think of with all of the other electromagnetic wavelengths first, and then you try _low_ doses of gamma rays, and if none of that gives us any results, then maybe we can think about if there is a safe and effective way to do high doses, but not before.”

“So, x-rays are alright?”

“You’d better be careful as hell.”

“Well, yes,” I said. “I don’t really plan on shortening my lifespan if I can help it.”

He was starting to look honestly stressed. When he started rubbing the bridge of his nose, I took pity on him. “Look, I’ll start with radio waves, okay? Nice and safe. And I’m working on the Pond-Apparatus parallel to that, so I won’t be moving all that fast anyway.”

“Why haven’t you started calling it the mage-o-meter yet?”

I stared at him. “No. Just no.”

“At this point, it makes more sense than the other name.”

“Don’t you dare rename my instruments!”

“The vibrometer could be Bob,” he suggested. “Or Alex, you should name it Alex.”

“I’ll name it pain-in-my-ass in a minute,” I threatened.

“That’d look terrible on your reports.”

I shook my head at him, but very fondly.

“I want you to keep in mind,” he said, suddenly serious, “that you _can_ outsource part of what you’re working on. If it gets to be too much; we’ve got two new physicists over in research who’d probably jump at the chance to do something more interesting. At some point you may have to, if only to speed it all along.”

“I know,” I sighed. “Maybe I’m being petty about not wanting to give any of this back to the research wing.”

“You’re definitely being petty. It’s okay. You’re allowed to be – for a little while. After that, get your shit together and be professional.”

“Noted.”

“Great. Now go away.”

*~*

Dealing with the fact that I was now working in the building that otherwise consisted of the training facilities used by the Strikers was less pleasant. I learned their general schedule and started carrying mace, and for the most part, that was enough, but not always.

They were aware I existed now, of course, as evidenced by the conversations I could frequently overhear because they weren’t used to anyone but them being in the prism and never kept their voices down. While I’d hoped for peaceful cohabitation, they didn’t seem to feel the same, instead considering me an interloper in their wing of the institute. It was a bit too much like being back in high school for my taste. The third time one of them warned another that ‘the nerd’ was nearby, I nearly facepalmed at the collective juvenile behavior of what should have been an elite strike force.

I stayed out of the way and put up with their antagonistic mutterings, and luckily, Bishop’s voice carried well enough that I could usually vacate any corridor he was likely to come down before he actually did it. The female Strikers – who appeared to all be sleeping with him in turn, or else they just had collective orgies, I wasn’t sure – considered my pattern of avoidance endlessly amusing. The guys, with one obvious exception, weren’t so bad, and a couple of them even took to greeting me when I ran into them here and there.

One day, I accidentally engaged two of them in a whole conversation, only because I couldn’t suppress a heartfelt “Holy shit!” when I saw the massive stitched-up cut across Ren’s face and realized that Chester currently possessed more bruises than unmarked skin.

“Gnarly, right?” Ren said with a half-grin, turning fully toward me to display the cut.

“A bit,” I said, because a response seemed to be expected.

“Better than having his head sliced off,” Chester remarked. “If you think about it like that, it’s actually not that bad.”

It occurred to me that this was probably why I didn’t mind my new scar as much as I had expected to – I was just glad Bishop had stopped before he sawed right through my windpipe.

“I’m really not all that bothered, but if you listen to Shannon, I’m basically the Hunchback of Notre-Dame now,” said Ren. “Nice guy, Shannon.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” I informed him.

“You probably shouldn’t,” said Chester.

“Probably not,” said Ren.

“But anyway,” said Chester, “doesn’t mean it isn’t true, so…fuck Shannon.”

“Yeah, fuck Shannon,” Ren agreed. “Dude is worse than Bishop sometimes, and that’s saying something.”

I fidgeted uncomfortably, hoping they wouldn’t notice, but of course I wasn’t so lucky.

“You _really_ don’t like Bishop,” Chester stated. “I thought Leslie was joking when she told me about that. I mean, to say he’s a terrible person is putting it mildly, but at least he really knows what he’s doing.”

“Sword spider had it out for me,” Ren added and tapped his face, below his stitches. “I really would have gotten my head sliced off if it wasn’t for him.”

“Great,” I said, fighting clenched teeth. “He made a pretty good attempt at slicing off mine, so I guess that totally makes up for it.”

They stared at me, wearing twin expressions of sudden horror. “You’re kidding,” Ren said then.

“Yes, you got me. I did it myself, just for fun.” I rolled my eyes and brushed my fingertips across the thick, raised scar, which really did look impressive, because forceful yet sloppy cutting with a jagged shard had done a huge amount of surface damage.

“Damn,” Ren said. “No wonder you’re scared of him. I don’t blame you.”

“I think,” Chester said thoughtfully, “that we tend to forget not everyone can make a decent attempt at holding their own against him.”

“Yes, I think so too,” I agreed.

“And he _did_ nearly kill Oscar when he first got here, although I think he mostly just didn’t know what the hell was happening.”

I glared at him. “If you’re going to defend him, don’t do it in front of me.”

Chester promptly shut up and made a zipping motion along his lips.

“I’ll tell Leslie not to be such a bitch about it,” Ren offered. “Or I might make my sister do it.”

I looked at him, surprised. “Thank you. But _please_ only if you’re sure it isn’t going to backfire and make it worse.”

He frowned and seemed to consider that.

“Anyway,” Chester said as he elbowed Ren, “we need to get going, I don’t want to get chewed out again. Patel’s been on my ass since Christmas. Nice talking with you though.”

Ren nodded along, and I said goodbye to them and walked up to my lab feeling kind of giddy. It was nice to have this sort of interaction with someone I hadn’t expected it from. I worked alone nearly all of the time, and I didn’t really bother to undertake the process of making new friends during the tiny bit of free time I did have – mostly because I wasn’t very good at it and had little chance of success, so I didn’t consider it worth the effort.

Ren’s sister, Yui, was the next one to purposely interact with me. She came by the lab late one day, holding what looked like little bags filled with sand or rice.

“Hi, sorry,” she said. “I was wondering if I could use your microwave?”

I swiveled my chair around and stared at her, confused. “Uh…my what?”

“Do you not have one?” she asked, chewing her lip. “Oh. Sorry to bother you, then, it’s just someone told me you had one up here and I thought I might be able to get those heated up really quick –”

“Oh,” I said when I grasped what the issue was. “Yeah, no, whoever told you that probably misunderstood. I don’t have the cook-your-food kind of microwave, I work with electromagnetic waves.”

“Oh,” she said and grimaced. “Now I feel stupid. I really didn’t mean to disturb –”

“Please don’t apologize. Human interaction is a bit scarce up here; I don’t mind someone stopping by, whatever the reason.”

“Right,” she said. “That makes sense. I might say hi some time then, um…Viola, right?”

“Close. Verena.”

“Right, okay,” she said and looked down at the pillow-bags in her arms. “I’ll have to go to Main for this then. It was nice meeting you!”

I did a little goodbye wave – which was kind of stupid, since her back was turned at this point – and then spent a few minutes feeling lovely about having had a visitor, even a somewhat accidental one. Yui surprised me in that she actually seemed kind of shy, which was not a trait I’d witnessed in any of the other Strikers. It was very refreshing. And I supposed that the only things a Striker absolutely _needed_ to be confident about were their strength and combat skill. I’d never seen Yui train, nor any of the others, but it was obvious how ridiculously muscular she was.

If I was honest with myself, I was more than a bit jealous. There was no way I would ever stand out for my physical strength. I wasn’t an athlete, or in any way naturally gifted. Then again, I could science the fuck out of my research projects and the Strikers couldn’t, so there was that.


	7. Isotope

**Isotope**

_(each of two or more forms of the same element_ _)_

“How are things?” Alex asked.

“Abysmal.” I plopped a plate of lemon squares on Alex’ desk and then dropped into a chair.

“Gee, that sounds promising, tell me more.”

“I’d rather not, and even if I did, you wouldn’t let me get more than two sentences out,” I pointed out. “I have a question though.”

“I might have –”

“No, Alex, just no, that’s the dumbest thing in the universe. For the love of all that is holy, do not finish that sentence.”

“–an answer,” he said.

“I really hate you sometimes.”

“Feeling’s mutual. Now – don’t leave me hanging, what sort of a headache can I expect this time?”

“It’s about the Pond-Apparatus.”

“Mage-o-meter.”

“Whatever. I’m really stuck with it. The problem is that I know essentially nothing about Faerun magic, so everything I do right now is based on wild guessing, and that’s only going to get me so far. I was hoping…well, there’s two things. First, if at all possible, I’d like to read whatever Receiver notes we have that mention magic.”

Alex frowned and then nodded as he reached for a lemon square. “That’s reasonable,” he said. “It’ll take me a little while to go through them, but I can do that for you.”

“Great,” I said. “The other thing is…well, there’s a Faerun woman in London, right?”

“There is, yes,” he said carefully. “At the Goldcrest Fellowship. It’s their version of Dome.”

“Is there any way I could…I don’t know, correspond with her? Ask her questions about magic?”

“Ah,” he said. “Yeah, that’ll be exceedingly difficult. London isn’t exactly keen on sharing.”

“Have you told them we’ve got someone now too? I mean, you don’t have to say how fucking uncooperative he is, you could just hint that –”

“I am _so_ glad you’re not in charge of diplomatic relations,” he said. “No, I can’t just _hint_. I can, however, let them know we’ll share part of the results with them, and see what they say. Fair warning though, even if I do achieve anything, it’ll take a good long while.”

I sighed. “Okay. I appreciate you trying.”

“Yes, well, I _do_ want you to make progress, you know. I’m not Edgar.”

“And thank god for that,” I said, with feeling.

*~*

Lenya had gotten into the habit of stopping by my lab shortly after whatever time Alex decided he no longer needed her for the day. She would sit on the comfortable couch that was totally worth the money I’d spent on it, chatting away or asking questions about what I was doing, letting me ramble on when I had issues, and sometimes, when my work demanded a great amount of focus, keeping me silent company. I always looked forward to her visits, because I still spent a huge amount of time on my own.

Then, one afternoon, I looked up when I heard steps and was surprised to see not Lenya, but Yui.

“Hi,” she said carefully

“Hello,” I said. “Um, did you just need something real quick, or would you like to sit down?”

Her eyes strayed to the couch. “Yes,” she said, “well, you said you wouldn’t mind company, and my alternative right now would be watching everyone else do PT, which is really boring, so…”

“Please.” I gestured to the couch, relieved when she crossed the room to sit on it. “So, allow me to ask an obvious question – how come you aren’t doing it with them?”

“Triceps strain,” she said. “It’s really mild, but it would be stupid of me to agitate it instead of letting it heal, you know?”

“Sort of?” I said. “I mean, I know a strain is, like, a muscle tear, but I’ve never had one, so I’m not sure how you’re supposed to treat it.”

“Resting should be enough for this one,” she said. “I got it yesterday during team drills. It shouldn’t take long to heal unless I do something stupid. I can still manage a lot of the exercises, but I’ve been doing everything with my left arm today and I don’t want to strain something there too because I’m pushing it too hard.”

“That makes sense. Yeah, you’re always welcome to hang out. I might ask you to be quiet on occasion if I need to focus, but I definitely don’t mind the company.”

“I can do quiet,” she assured me. “Sometimes I think I’m the only female Striker who can.”

“Probably,” I said. “I feel like I can hear the red-haired one from three floors away.”

“Leslie? Ugh.” Yui made a face. “I shouldn’t speak badly about any of them, but she’s really not easy to be around. And especially when she’s with Savannah or Naomi…they really feed off each other. It gets annoying.”

“Which ones are Savannah and Naomi?”

“Naomi’s the one with the cornrows. Savannah is the only other Asian we’ve got apart from Ren and me.”

“Ah, right, the ‘watch out for the nerd’ giggle squad.”

Yui winced. “Yes. Sorry.”

“Why? You’re not the one who keeps doing it.”

“True, but I really should have said something about it before now. It’s not okay.”

“Don’t bother,” I told her. “For one, it’s not going to change anything. And the fact that they’re idiots isn’t going to make me run away crying.”

“Okay,” she said and looked a little more relaxed. “So, what do you do here? I remember you saying something about electromagnetic waves, but that’s nothing if not vague. And why aren’t you over in the research wing, anyway?”

“I was over there, actually,” I told her. “Had massive issues with my supervisor, he was basically just sabotaging me. And there was unused lab space over here, so Alex decided I’d get to use it however I needed and would just report directly to him.”

Her nose crinkled. “You guys call him Alex? I didn’t think we were supposed to.”

“Civilian,” I said. “Although Lenya is one too, and she still says ‘general’, but I think that’s mostly just because he hasn’t formally invited her to use his first name, and she’s Lenya, so she’s not about to take liberties.”

“Oh, right,” she said. “This is going to sound stupid, but sometimes I forget that not everyone’s military. The current Strikers all are – well, there’s Bishop, but he’s just…Bishop. He does whatever he wants half the time.”

I snorted. “Only half?”

“Yeah, I’m probably giving him too much credit.” She smiled, but then fell serious, and I knew what was coming. “Ren said he was the one who did that to your throat.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Good times.”

“I’m sorry.” She looked like she meant it. “That can’t be easy, going through all of that and not even seeing him punished for it.”

“Yes, well.” I shrugged. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but can we please stop talking about it? I’d rather devote my time and energy to literally any other topic.”

“Sure,” she said. “You still haven’t told me what you do here.”

“Oh, right. I’m a bit stuck at this point, so it’s not too exciting, but I basically research the barriers that keep apart the dimensions. I figured out that electromagnetic waves affect them, so now I’m just experimenting.”

“Oh, wow,” she said, sounding honestly impressed. “That is not what I thought you’d say.”

“What _did_ you think I’d say?”

“I’m not really sure.” She shrugged. “Bit silly, but I never really spent all that much time thinking about what you guys do apart from dissecting the dead bodies we bring in sometimes. I thought, like, weapons research or something.”

“I think they do a bit of that, too, but I don’t know much about the other floors over there, only the one I was in.”

“You guys all seem very mysterious to the lot of us,” she said.

“Yeah, it’s the same the other way round. All I know is that the Strikers train a lot, and then they occasionally go out and kill stuff.”

“I mean, that’s really sort of it,” she said. “Well, we don’t always kill, but a lot of the time, that’s what it boils down to. Our first priority is civilian safety, so if there’s any doubt, we shoot first and ask later.”

“So, if something happens, do you all go in a big group? How does that work?”

“We work in teams of two. Ren and I are a Striketeam, for example, since we’re used to each other. His specialty is martial arts. I’m okay at them, but I’m better with guns.”

“Wait, seriously?” I stared at her. “Like, what sorts of guns?”

“Assault rifle and shotgun, mostly. Close-range stuff.”

Well _that_ sure as hell put Yui in a whole new light. I quite liked her – she was calm and level-headed and fascinating to talk to, and we ended up spending a good hour chatting about everything under the sun. At that point, Lenya entered as per usual, but then she faltered.

“Ah,” I said. “Lenya – Yui. Lenya’s the general’s utterly indispensable aide. Yui is a complete badass.”

They both opened their mouth, probably to be all humble about it and insist that they really weren’t all that awesome, but that was when Ren entered the lab as well. Lenya squeaked and took three steps sideways.

“Um,” he said and shot her a confused look before turning to his sister. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“Clearly, you’ve found me,” she said. “Want to sit?”

“Yes,” he said and made his way over to her. He looked utterly exhausted. “I feel like I might keel over otherwise. Patel was _brutal_ today.”

“Patel is always brutal,” said Yui.

“Yeah, but I mean, even for him. I thought Bishop was gonna punch him, and the –”

“Alright, new rule,” I interrupted him. “That name is not to be mentioned in my lab. This is now a sadistic-murderous-asshole-free zone.”

“That sounds reasonable,” said Ren. “You should put it on a little plaque next to the door.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Lenya still looked three-quarters terrified, but I could see the corner of her mouth quirking up at the exchange, which…good. I quite liked the idea of having a whole three people who felt welcome here. It would be disappointing if the siblings were to scare her off.

*~*

“What are you guys doing tonight?” I asked, trying not to let on how nervous I was. This was not my thing. Trying to socialize outside the safety of my lab was nerve-wrecking as all hell, and it had taken days until I’d managed to talk myself into asking Ren and Yui.

“Nothing, I think,” Ren said. “We go to bed pretty early, what with training and such.”

“Oh. Then I suppose you probably wouldn’t…I mean, Lenya and I were planning to watch a movie. So. Um. You know.”

This was awful. I was so not built for this.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “As long as it’s not, like, a three-and-a-half-hour epic.”

I wanted to keel over from the sheer relief I felt. I forced out a quick, “Great!” and my room number and then fled, because it had just occurred to my clever little brain that Lenya probably deserved a warning. She’d calmed down a lot around the siblings, but it still wasn’t fair to spring this on her.

And there _was_ some awkwardness after Ren and Yui had knocked on my door and taken a seat on the blankets we’d lined up and stacked against the wall to form a makeshift sofa. But then Tess, who had far more social awareness than I did, jumped straight into Yui’s lap and caused a startled yelp.

“Oh,” I said. “Crap. I’m sorry, I forgot to ask if either of you are allergic.”

“Oh, no, no,” Yui said with a sudden blissful expression on her face, and lifted Tess up to eye-level. “Hi, sweetie! Who’s a good kitty-cat?”

Ren didn’t appear to be any less excited than his sister. He began to scratch Tess under the chin almost immediately, making a sound of protest when Yui tried to move her away.

“I take it you like cats?” I asked cleverly.

“Used to have three of them when we grew up,” Ren told me. “Can’t now, obviously. I can’t believe you have her here, did you smuggle her in?”

“Civilian,” I said with a shrug, “I think. Or maybe Alex just figured I wouldn’t want to give her up to take the job, so he made an exception. I do wish she had more space to roam around, though.”

“You could put up shelves,” Ren suggested and pointed upwards. “Like, make her a little path all the way to the ceiling that she can climb.”

I perked up. “That’s a really good idea.”

“We could help,” he said eagerly. “Make it a group project.”

“That…” I wasn’t really sure what to say to that. It was a little overwhelming. Amazing, but overwhelming all the same. “Thank you,” I finally managed.

“Now what’s her name, then?” Yui asked. She was allowing my silly cat to bat her paws at a strand of hair that had come loose from her ponytail.

“Tess,” I said. “Tesseract, really, but that’s kind of a mouthful.”

“I didn’t know that.” Lenya sat up straight. “Why did you never tell me?”

I blinked. “I had no idea it was important.”

“It seems rude, somehow, not to know her full name. I mean, she’s quite regal.”

“Girl after my own heart,” Ren said approvingly, and Lenya blushed.

Tess stayed while we watched ‘The Usual Suspects’, being transferred from Yui’s lap to Ren’s, and then back, getting more snuggles and ear-rubs than she had in a very long time. She allowed it long past the point where I’d have expected her to fight her way to freedom. It was like she knew exactly how pathetic I was with people and had decided to lend a paw.

“This was fun,” Ren said afterward, as the siblings prepared to leave. “We should do it again some time.”

He actually sounded like he meant it, which I thought was kind of amazing. I patted myself on the back for having found the courage to invite them over.

“We could make it a standing date,” Yui suggested. “Once a week, unless something comes up?”

“You guys don’t have, I mean, like…I thought you’d want to spend most of your time with the other Strikers,” I said.

The two of them looked at each other. “Not really,” Yui said then. “We’re with them all day when we train. And you already know there are a few girls who like to stir up drama, and the guys tend to be too crude in their spare time for me to want to be around them. So it usually ends up being just the two of us.”

“Alright then,” I said. “Standing movie date it is.”


	8. Bow Shock

**Bow Shock**

_(the shock wave formed by the collision of a stellar wind with another medium)_

It was great, being friends with Ren and Yui. On top of attending the weekly movie night, they also continued to stop by the lab occasionally, and once or twice they even brought Chester along. Lenya soon seemed to become as comfortable around them as she was around me, and that made me happy as well – for one because it meant the whole thing didn’t stress her out, but also because it was becoming more and more clear to me that Lenya, in her own quiet, unassuming way, yearned for something resembling a family.

What made me less happy was the lab work itself. None of the approaches I tried for the electromagnetic waves puzzle yielded the slightest hint of a result, and as far as the Pond-Apparatus was concerned, I didn’t even know where to _start_. My lack of knowledge about Faerun magic was turning into more than a minor inconvenience. While Alex assured me that he was working on getting me access to the Goldcrest Fellowship’s Faerunian, it was a slow process.

One morning in early March, I entered my lab in one of the worst moods I’d been in for a while. I’d slept like hell, and I’d woken up to find my sheets soaked with blood, which the damn birth control implant had been meant to _reduce,_ that was why I’d _gotten_ the fucking thing, and instead it seemed to be making my periods worse. Then I’d had to go out of my way to get to the top floor because my usual path had been blocked by Bishop standing in the middle of the hallway with one of the other Strikers – Savannah – and hurling verbal abuse at her like it was going out of style, and oh my _fucking god,_ couldn’t he just go away already?

Instead of taking a seat at my desk and getting started on work that felt more and more pointless with each passing day, I rubbed my temples, then proceeded to cross the room, drop onto the couch with a whiny sound, and stare at the ceiling.

And then I just kept staring.

It was all square white panels, boring and repetitive and not in the slightest inspiring, except…well, except that they formed a grid, and near one corner of it, there was a spot of old water damage I’d never before paid any attention to.

I’d graphed the Pond-Apparatus data a million different ways, and I thought I’d gotten everything I could out of that approach. But I’d always treated the numbers as though they were part of something _continuous_. I’d wanted them to fit some manner of smooth curve, which had never really worked. It hadn’t occurred to me that white noise and interference might be distorting something that was actually discrete, not until the stupid ceiling of all things had reminded me of studying taxicab geometry the last semester before I’d dropped out of college.

Suddenly energetic, I launched myself off the couch and went to work.

I was so immersed that I never even looked at the time, and so I didn’t realize lunch had come and gone until there was a knock on the door and then Lenya walked in holding a paper bag.

“Was getting worried about you,” she said and looked around with interest, at the many printouts scattered on the floor, at me, lying right in the middle of them, at the giant piece of poster board I was using to graph things. “What…is all that?”

“Taxicab geometry.”

“…what?”

“And discrete graphing.”

“I probably shouldn’t have asked.”

“And quadquinary numbers.”

“Now you’re just making things up.”

“I’m really not,” I insisted. “Quadquinary is like…you know how our regular numbers are base ten, and, like, binary is base two?”

“Sort of, yes,” she said carefully.

“Quadquinary is…it’s base twenty, but it uses four and five as sub-bases, and –”

“Verena,” she interrupted me, kindly but firmly. “I get that you’re very excited about this, but you need to remember that I’m not a mathematician. I’ve brought you some lunch. Sit and eat and then tell me in a way that’ll let me understand the general idea of it.”

I obeyed.

“Sorry,” I said halfway through the roast beef sandwich, which I was chewing hurriedly. “I just haven’t made progress on this in so long, and I’m excited.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m really glad.”

“Thanks for bringing food. I’ve been working on this pretty much continuously since I had the idea.”

She smiled. “I can see how excited you are, you know. Your eyes are all bright and sparkly, and you’re flushed, and I feel like you’re in danger of exploding with this sort of…energy.”

_“I_ feel like this entire thing is going to slip through my fingers if I don’t work fast enough. You know what I mean?”

“Not sure,” she said. “Does this have to do with the magic or with the Veil?”

“The magic. See, I realized that the data from the Pond-Apparatus might be…hey, you know what? This actually makes a lot of sense using that metaphor. I realized that the data I have might be like the surface ripples a few seconds after the pebbles have fallen in. It’s nice to have those numbers and all, but what I really want to know is where and when exactly the pebbles hit the water, so I need to take the numbers and sort of…extrapolate backwards, to find the points of origin.”

_“Oh,”_ she said.

“And now I’m graphing them on a grid, because as it turns out, they seem to _fit_ a grid. It’s kind of insane how well it lines up, actually, but it makes me pretty certain I’m on the right track.”

“The right track to what, though?” she asked.

I shrugged. “We’ll find out when I get there.”

*~*

I barely slept that night, like a kid before Christmas, and the next morning I was right back at it. There was so much data, so much calculating and graphing to do, and when Lenya brought me lunch once again, I asked her for an entire stack of poster boards. She returned with them half an hour later and then settled down next to me and offered to help. I set her to work making a grid, then graphing data points and keeping record of the quadquinary number assigned to each. A few hours and a lot of caffeine later, Ren and Yui stopped by and were eager to join the proceedings, and so by the time _Alex_ made an appearance, we were quite the sight, all of us on the floor, poster boards and markers everywhere, _more_ poster boards taped to the walls.

“Ah,” he said, which was when we all looked up and realized he was standing by the door. “I take it you’ve made a breakthrough?”

“Yes,” I said. “Taxicab geometry. And yes, that’s actually a thing. Everyone keeps doubting me when I say it.”

“This the mage-o-meter?”

I sighed and gave up. “Yes, Alex, it’s the mage-o-meter. We’re figuring out the patterns that the rocks make as they hit the water. And then I plan to try and find out the exact shapes of the rocks. And _then,_ if we’re lucky, maybe I can find out the shape of the thing that broke to form the rocks.”

“Right,” he said. “You’re making less than zero sense to me, but I think you might be in Receiver mode, so I’ll leave you to it.”

“I had some inspiration, Alex, that’s all. I’m not a fucking satellite dish.”

“That’s what inspiration _is,_ dummy.”

“Oh my god, go away.”

He did. As soon as the sound of his steps faded, Ren made a sound of amusement. “I cannot believe he lets you talk to him like that.”

“He’s really not a natural stiff-upper-lip kind of person, he just has to be because of his rank and position,” I said. “As long as _you_ don’t start talking to him like that, he can get away with letting me.”

“I could never,” he said. “That’s, like, against the laws of nature or something.”

“Maybe against the laws of _Ren.”_

“Or that.” He shrugged and glanced at the clock, then threw his marker down. “Crap. Ray’s going to hand us our asses on a plate if we don’t get down there in the next six minutes.”

“Yours, maybe,” Yui said as she followed her brother’s lead and got to her feet. “I haven’t ever been late for tactics.”

“Thanks, that’s very helpful,” Ren said. “We’ll see you guys later?”

“We’ll be here,” I assured him. “Or at least I will. I wasn’t planning to shackle Lenya to a wall or anything.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” said Lenya.

“Well that’s intriguing.” Ren winked at her and made his way out the door. When I glanced back to Lenya, her face had turned the color of a ripe tomato.

“You okay?” I asked.

“Oh, I. Um. That…”

“I take it you’re not used to people flirting with you. Don’t worry, I’m the same.”

“I can’t believe I said that.” She was nearly whispering.

“Wasn’t that bad, hon. Ren’s just got a filthy mind.”

She looked unconvinced.

“I appreciate you helping me so much with all of these things,” I told her. “In case that wasn’t clear. If you like, I can yell at Ren for corrupting you.”

“Oh _, no.”_ Her eyes widened. “Don’t. Just please don’t. That would make it all so much worse.”

My gaze sharpened at her tone as it dawned on me. “Oh. You li –”

“Don’t say it!”

I closed my mouth as she covered her still flaming red face with her hands.

*~*

I plastered the walls of my lab with poster board until three of them were completely covered, and then I proceeded to stare at all of the graphs a lot as I tried to figure out the quadquinary numbers part of it all. I found myself drifting in the direction of graph theory after a few weeks of semi-random fucking around with it all, but the burst of inspiration I’d had was all used up, so progress had slowed considerably.

Alex gave me a lockbox with several volumes of Receiver diaries in it that mentioned magic. I’d hoped there was a way to connect the two, but the more I read up on it, the more I doubted it was possible. There was next to no information about the technical side of things, how magic was utilized. It drove me a little bit crazy. I understood that the topic probably wasn’t among the things receivers thought worth paying attention to, but…damn it, how the hell was I the only one who found this interesting?

I came back from Alex’ office one afternoon, excited about the possibility of finally talking to the Faerun woman, and found my lab full of people, which was…weird. I wasn’t used to having a whole crowd in there. In addition to Ren, Yui and Lenya, there was Chester, and cross-legged on the floor sat a guy I’d never seen before, all blond tousled hair and cheerful demeanor.

“Elliot,” he introduced himself and shook my hand while still seated. “I insisted on finally meeting their scientist friend they all keep talking about.”

“Um,” I said, looking over to Ren and Yui, “seriously? You guys actually _talk_ about me down there?”

“Well, not in front of Leslie, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named,” Ren said, causing both Lenya and me to start laughing. “Elliot’s new – obviously – but he’s been hanging out with us lately.”

“I’m not all about the drama,” Elliot elaborated.

“A man after my own heart,” I said. He promptly winked at me, and I pulled a Lenya and started blushing.

“How’s the Quad-thing going?” Ren asked.

“Quadquinary.”

“That’s what I said.”

“It’s going,” I told him. “Making progress here and there. Goldcrest has finally agreed to let me correspond with their Faerunian, but I’ve got to write an actual letter on paper for some reason – I’m not sure why, maybe printing an email is too much to ask, or maybe the Faerunian is a bit eccentric. How are things on your end?”

“Well enough,” he said.

“Except I keep having to stop you before you end up committing murder,” Yui said. “That part is emphatically _not_ well.”

“That sounds…a bit concerning,” said Lenya.

“It’s just goddamn _Francis,”_ Ren said. “He was tolerable at the start, but now…”

“Who the hell is Francis?” I asked.

“This guy…he worked in dining services, and then he told the brass he wanted to be a Striker, and for some idiotic reason, they let him start training. I think it’s probably just because he already worked here, so it was almost no effort – on their part, anyway. We’ve been having to put up with him and train him, and it’s…”

“Frustrating,” said Elliot. “And I say that as someone who’s only been here for a few weeks.”

“He’s not very good?” I asked.

Ren sighed. “That’s an understatement. And it’s becoming clear that there’s no way in hell he’ll pass the one-year eval, so he pretty much stopped trying, but he also hasn’t quit, so he’s just, like…this massive dead weight we’ve all got hanging around our necks.”

“Sounds lovely,” I said. “Tell me more.”

“Oh, no,” said Elliot. “Mercy, I beg of you!”

“You’re going to scare him off,” Yui said, mock-reprimanding. “And then there’s a chance we’ll get someone _else_ who shouldn’t be here.”

“Claus from Medical, maybe,” I said.

Ren closed his eyes. “Oh god,” he said weakly. “Training will never bring me joy ever again. Murder me now.”

Chester shot him with a finger gun.

*~*

One morning toward the end of May, I entered my lab and stopped dead, because most of my equipment was gone.

Just gone.

The mage-o-meter was still there, as was my computer, but the vibrometer and the barometer had been taken, as well as the folders where I’d kept the all of my notes on them. This wasn’t some random break-in.

I hurried from the lab all the way to Admin, straight past Lenya, who jumped up in alarm, and crashed into Alex’ office like a wrecking ball.

“What,” I said, “the _fuck?”_

Alex winced. “Yeah, I was hoping to talk to you before you saw, but then I got busy.”

“How nice for you,” I said. “Alex, _what the fuck did you do?”_

He sighed and gave me a long, thorough look. “You and I both know that you haven’t made progress with anything but the mage-o-meter recently.”

“And so?” I asked, voice shaking with all sorts of emotion.

“And so, I’ve told you before that there are a couple of physicists over in research who are vastly overqualified for what they’re doing, so I took the liberty of reassigning part of your workload.”

“You took. The. Liberty.”

He winced again. “I suggested several times that you do exactly that, that you focus on _one_ area and let them work on another, and you weren’t very cooperative about it.”

“I might have been if you’d made it in _any_ way clear that it was far more than a suggestion, but you didn’t. You didn’t even give me any fucking _warning!”_

“No, I didn’t. As for why – frankly, because I wanted to get it over with, and because it wouldn’t have changed anything.”

I wanted to throttle him. My eyes stung.

“Maybe not the outcome. But it sure as hell changed my opinion on you not being a colossal asshole.”

“Well, maybe I deserve that a little bit,” he said.

“There’s no ‘maybe’ about it. If you respected me even the tiniest bit as a scientist, you’d have at least requested my input, or given me time to adjust, fucking _anything,_ but because I don’t have a fancy fucking degree like they clearly do, apparently that’s not necessary.”

_“That_ isn’t fair,” he said. “Your lack of a degree hasn’t ever mattered –”

“The fuck it hasn’t! You obviously don’t think I’m qualified to handle this, and at the same time you think that they are, and don’t you dare tell me that it has nothing to do with their degrees.”

“Well, it doesn’t, although maybe –”

“I conceived that entire thing from _nothing,_ Alex! It was my fucking child, one hundred percent my work, and you didn’t think I deserved even just to participate in the _handover?”_

He closed his eyes. I wasn’t sure if he was tired of my shouting, or if it was dawning on him just how massively he’d fucked up, but I wasn’t about to stick around and find out.

Slamming the door brought me exactly zero satisfaction.


	9. Eclipse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a trigger warning for this chapter. To avoid spoilers for those who don't want them, I put the specifics in the end notes of the chapter.

**Eclipse**

_(an obscuring of the light from one celestial body by the passage of another)_

“You’re depressed,” Lenya said.

I managed a bitter laugh. “Of course I’m depressed. I’m fucking _devastated.”_

“Still?” she asked gently. “You’ve made progress with the magic.”

“Well, not like I have anything else to work on, now is it? And besides, at this point it’s less about _what_ Alex did and more that he was the one who did it, because I had a lot of trust in him, and that’s definitely gone out the window and done a nosedive straight into the pavement.”

She sighed. “I’m still mad at him too, you know. I don’t think he thought it through. I don’t think he expected it would hit you this hard.”

“Clearly.”

“But at some point,” she said, “you’ll need to let it go for your own sake. It’s making you…you’re starting to look almost sick. You’re always pale and sort of hunched and just so utterly unhappy.”

“I don’t know if I can yet,” I said. “It’s only been a few weeks.”

“A month and a half,” she corrected.

“Really? Feels like it only just happened.” I stared down at my notebook, where I’d been doodling instead of doing any work. I’d been able to puzzle out that the plotted points on the poster boards could be connected in undirected graphs in which the number and positions of edges was determined by the quadquinary numbers associated with each vertex. It was almost always possible to create something like a path, something that could be traced from beginning to end without lifting the pencil from the page. I had absolutely no idea what that could possibly be used for – I wasn’t even sure what it _was_ – but I hadn’t had the motivation to figure out anything else to work on, so I just created a bunch of picture paths for no real reason except to stay busy. I called them runes, because that sounded all magic-y.

“I’m slowly but surely getting worried about you,” Lenya said.

“You shouldn’t be,” I said. “I’m just moping.”

“And you’re not showing any signs of being willing to stop anytime soon. Look, can you just…just try to be a little more social again? I mean, I like spending time with Ren and Yui, but it’s not the same, with you never coming to movie nights anymore.”

“So, in essence, you want me to get a life?” I asked.

“You _have_ a life,” she said. “You’re just hiding from it in a lab. Look, just…promise me you’ll give it a try?”

I was half-tempted to roll my eyes, but it wouldn’t have been fair to her, and rude to boot. So I gave her a weak nod and tried not to show how much I dreaded it all.

*~*

A couple of days later, Alex sent me yet another message requesting to meet with me to discuss the whole research-stealing matter, and I ignored it yet again. He’d been surprisingly patient so far, and I tried really hard to not appreciate it the tiniest bit. Scowling moodily as I walked around really seemed to help the matter.

“Hello,” I heard suddenly nearby as I was about to enter my lab, and I jumped with fright.

“Sorry,” Elliot said sheepishly and stepped out of the shadows. “Waiting for you over here seemed like a great idea. Suffice to say, I did _not_ think that through.”

“Clearly,” I said, and rolled my eyes as I unlocked the door. “What are you doing here?”

“Yui asked me to give you this.” He lifted the few sheets of paper he’d been holding. “I’m not sure if you know she’s been busy with the extra training duties she took on. Her mornings are pretty insane.”

I _hadn’t_ known, which was probably a pretty big sign that Lenya had a point. It was getting difficult to tell myself she was exaggerating.

“Right,” I said and waved Elliot into the lab. “What is it?”

“Recipes? I think?” He squinted at the topmost sheet. “Three cups of flour, one cup of brown sugar…yeah, that sounds about right. As for why she’s giving them to you, I haven’t the slightest clue.”

“Probably trying to cheer me up,” I said and took the recipes from him. “She knows I like to bake, but I haven’t done it recently.”

“Yeah, I noticed that you never hang out in Ren and Yui’s room with the rest of them. Not doing so well?”

“Not really, no. I’d really rather not talk about it though.”

He nodded his acquiescence and put his hands in his pockets as he studied me for a few seconds. Feeling suddenly a bit awkward, I started flipping through the recipes.

“We should hang out more,” he said abruptly. “Like, the two of us.”

Well. I supposed I’d promised Lenya I would put effort into having an actual life again, so it was probably prudent to try before she started getting legitimately upset at me.

“Movie tonight?” I suggested, even though I was everything but enthusiastic about it. “If you like. Just come over whenever.”

He looked surprised, then nodded. “Yeah, okay. Sounds great.”

It didn’t occur to me until hours later that ‘just the two of’ us was probably something I should have paid more attention to.

“Crap,” I said, right in the middle of rune-drawing.

“What?” Lenya asked from the couch.

“I agreed to watch a movie with Elliot. Only it just occurred to me that he probably thinks this is a date. And that’s just not a thing I do. People don’t usually interest me, like, romantically. Or in any other way except friendship.”

“Just explain that once you guys meet up,” she said pragmatically.

“Yeah, I’ll have to, won’t I? I only ever went on dates in high school, and those were all horrid by nature, so I really don’t want to suffer through it and pretend. How do I even, like, bring that up in a way that’s not stupid?”

“I’m not sure. Are you going to his room?”

“No, we’re using mine. Is that good or bad, do you think?”

“It’ll probably be easier to bring it up if you’re in familiar surroundings. It works that way for me, at least, it’s grounding.”

“Right,” I said. “Makes sense. Ugh, it’s bound to be totally awkward, isn’t it?”

“Maybe not. From what I’ve seen, Elliot takes most things in stride. And if you like, I can come over at some point tonight and, you know, make it _not_ be a date.”

“I love you,” I said. “Yes, please do that.”

“Of course, there’s always a chance that me being there makes it _more_ awkward instead of less,” she said. “But I’ll try my best.”

*~*

“I hope you like beer,” Elliot said cheerfully when I opened my door for him, and lifted a six-pack of bottles. “Because…yeah.”

“Yeah,” I repeated drily, stepping aside to let him in. “So, um…”

“I didn’t bring any movies, I figured just whatever’s on Netflix would be fine, right?”

I nodded. He put the six-pack on the floor and took out two bottles, handing me one of them with a little bow, and ugh, I already felt awkward. He didn’t seem to feel any such thing, and as my stomach churned, he got comfortable on my bed and took control of the remote.

“Comedy?” he suggested just as I opened my mouth for a second attempt. “Action? Oh, hey, Adam Sandler. Is that alright with you?”

Hell, he was steamrolling me and didn’t even seem to notice in his enthusiasm. I took a polite sip of my beer and made my way to the bed, because I’d been standing there for too long, and it was probably weird. I considered making another attempt to clarify, but then he patted the spot next to him, and I didn’t feel like I had any alternatives to sitting there.

Ugh, why the hell had I agreed to this?

“So, um,” I said as the movie started, because Elliot finally seemed to be ready to shut up for more than ten seconds. “I should probably clarify, I don’t really do, like…dating.”

“Oh, okay,” he said, sounding unbothered, “that’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“Okay,” I said, and finally, _finally_ managed to relax.

I hadn’t actually watched an Adam Sandler movie before – I’d always been convinced they weren’t my thing – but the one Elliot had picked was actually kind of cute, and mildly amusing. The whole amnesia bit made it interesting, and after half an hour or so, I was ready to admit that the two of us sitting there watching a movie together was actually kind of nice.

Until Elliot put his hand on my thigh.

“Um,” I said.

He didn’t react, and I was unsure how to proceed. It seemed unlikely that he was doing it by accident, but I’d told him…and he hadn’t acted…I was very confused.

His hand started moving in circles, in a way that made me _vastly_ uncomfortable.

“Could you…not?” I forced out.

“What?” he asked, sounding surprised. His hand kept moving.

“Your hand.”

“What about it?”

“I don’t really…I told you –”

“That you don’t date, right, I remember. What does that have to do with anything?”

Oh. _Oh,_ that made more sense. He thought –

“I don’t really do sex either,” I clarified. “It’s not my thing.”

“What? Sex is everybody’s thing.” His hand was still fucking moving, and…ugh. Great.

“Well, not mine, so can you just…” I brought my own hand up to nudge his away, and suddenly his fingers had my wrist in an iron grip.

“That…what are you doing?”

“Huh?”

“Seriously, could you _not?”_

“Not what?”

I really hoped I was imagining the sudden dangerous edge in his tone.

“Please let go of me,” I said.

“Stop putting your hand in the way then.”

Part of me was still busy telling me that it was all a huge misunderstanding. Another part was just sort of standing there and shrugging helplessly, at a loss for how to react. I was sitting there frozen, and my wrist was really starting to hurt, and oh my god, I could _not_ believe I was having to deal with this.

Elliot twisted his body and reached over with his free hand, picking up where the other had left off. I clamped my thighs together. His fingers started working their way in there anyway.

“Stop,” I said.

“Why?” He was way too fucking close to me, and his breath tickled my ear in a really gross way.

“Because I _asked_ you to.”

“You also asked me to come to your room, so you’re giving me really mixed signals here.”

_“Stop,”_ I said again, through gritted teeth.

When he still didn’t, I started to move away, even though it meant giving up on keeping his hand away from between my legs. It grabbed hold there like a fucking leech, and my attempt to pull my wrist away was met with exactly zero success.

“This is really just _stupid,”_ he said. “It’s not a big deal, just lie back down and let me –”

_“No!”_

I pulled away as forcefully as I could, and that was when he gave up on the pretense. His arm came around my waist, he threw me back on the bed, and then he pushed my face into the pillow.

I panicked. I was reminded so much of the night I’d gotten my throat cut, and that finally got me to fight, to yell, to kick, but Elliot was a Striker, and he was far, far stronger than me, holding me almost completely immobile with his body on top of mine and –

There was a dull sound, and at the same moment I felt Elliot jerk. Then he went limp.

“Verena?” I heard as I tried to push him off of me with all my might. “Oh fuck, oh hell –”

I turned and blinked, because the lights were suddenly back on, and there was Lenya holding a bottle of beer in her hand like a baseball bat.

“Oh,” I said weakly.

“Come, come on, away from him.” She held out her hand, and when I took it, feeling dazed and overwhelmed and like this was all just _surreal,_ she tugged and helped me crawl off the bed. I didn’t dare look behind me. “Yui’s over in my room, we’ll just…we can tell her, she’ll figure out what to do about him.”

I started shaking.

I still hadn’t even started processing when I was sitting on the floor in Lenya’s room, blanket around my shoulders, and Lenya, Yui and Ren sat there like my personal bodyguards while Major General Brittany Kirby asked me questions.

“No,” I said tiredly. “No, I didn’t lead him on.”

“You did invite –”

“Watching a movie is not an invitation to be molested,” Ren said sharply.

Kirby glared at him. “Watch your tone, Sugiyama. I do need to ask some uncomfortable questions to get the facts, I can’t help that. The sooner you zip it, the sooner we can get this over with.”

Ren crossed his arms but didn’t respond.

_“Thank_ you,” she said. “Verena, did you go on a date with him before this one? Or was this the first?”

“Wasn’t a date at all. I already told you that.”

“Did you clarify that to him?”

_“Yes._ If I hadn’t, would that have made it okay?”

“I’m not saying that,” she said calmly.

Then _why the hell did it need specifying?_ I was so very fucking exhausted, and I did not want to deal with any of this. I leaned into Lenya and put my head on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around me immediately.

“Have Elliot and you ever kissed?” Kirby asked.

“What? _No._ Why?”

“Because it might be important,” she said absently as she wrote it down.

“Are you going to ask me what I was wearing next?”

“I understand that you’ve been through something traumatic, but your attitude really is not helping things,” she informed me coolly. “I’m doing my job here, that’s all.”

“Well, we never kissed. We never even _talked_ the past several weeks before today. Lenya suggested I should be more social, so that’s what I tried to do.”

She looked up sharply. “Was it _your_ idea to watch a movie together?”

“Yes,” I said tiredly. “But he was the one who said he wanted to hang out with just me.”

“But it was still partially _your_ initiative.”

I really, _really_ wanted to cry.

*~*

“Alex said to ask if you felt comfortable meeting with him,” Lenya said gently the next day, when she came back after work. I’d slept in her room the previous night, since I’d hardly been ready to sleep alone, especially not in my bed.

I pressed my lips together. “No. Not yet, anyway.”

“Okay. He’ll respect that.”

“And even if I was, the last thing I want is to talk about it all yet _again.”_

“Right,” she said and sat down next to me, taking my hand.

“Are people talking about it? Do they know it happened?” I asked her.

She shook her head. “Not from what I’ve noticed.”

“Good. I really don’t want to keep being confronted about this shit.”

“Well that only makes sense,” she said.

I turned to her abruptly. “Thank you. For hitting him with a bottle, and for everything else. I’m so glad you’re my friend.”

“You’d have done the same for me,” she said confidently.

“Yes, I would.”

“I’ve got your back the best I can,” she said and hugged me tightly. “Ren and Yui as well.”

“I’m so sick of being attacked by people,” I said into her hair. “I’m so fucking sick of being weak and scared. That’s almost the worst thing, you know, that there’s so much _fear_ in me and it’s taking over my life. Hell, it already has. And I just…I wish I could be a stronger person. I wish I could conquer it.”

“We’ll figure something out,” she said confidently. “Or Alex will. Something to make the institute a safer place, like it’s supposed to be.”

“Hey,” I said. “Since when have you been calling him Alex, anyway?”

She made a small sound of amusement. “He got very exasperated with me a couple of weeks ago. Asked if I needed a formal invitation to call him by his first name. I said yes, so then he went into his office and came back half an hour later with this, like, fancy, certificate-looking thing. It said something like ‘Dearest Miss Collins, you are hereby formally invited’ and so on.”

I managed a weak grin. “Yeah, that sounds just like him.”

“He’s really worried about you, you know.”

I shrugged and commenced staring at my hands for a little while. Lenya took the hint and went to occupy herself with other things for a while, collecting laundry from around the room and folding up the pile of blankets she’d wrapped me in as Kirby had asked all those stupid fucking questions.

“Did anyone say what’s going to happen to him?” I asked abruptly.

“Dishonorable discharge, probably,” Lenya said. “Hopefully.”

“Doesn’t feel like enough.”

“No,” she agreed, and sat down next to me once more, taking my hand. “No, it definitely doesn’t.”

*~*

I was too emotionally drained to complain about it again when Alex told me the same thing about what consequences Elliot would face two days later, when I finally dragged myself to his office. He was kind and concerned and looked so very sorry, and all of it rushed right past me. He told me about the actions he planned to take, something about rape whistles and lectures on consent, and I got up right in the middle of it all and walked out the door so I could go hide under a pile of blankets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: Attempted sexual assault.


	10. Ferrous

**Ferrous**

_(containing or consisting of iron)_

“I need to learn how to defend myself,” I said on an unbearably humid day in July, when Ren and Yui and Lenya were keeping me company in the lab. I’d been spending a lot of time here, struggling to escape the haze in which my mind seemed to have shrouded itself, and it felt like I was finally managing to. “And attack, too, ideally.”

“What happened wasn’t your fault just because you’re weak,” Yui said, sounding distracted.

“Well, no, but the fact that I’m weak is still going to be a problem if something like that ever happens again.” I hesitated. “Can you teach me?”

“Um,” she said, putting her magazine down, “I would love to, but the problem is, we’re not allowed.”

“What? Why?”

“Policy, remember?” said Lenya.

“Not really, no.”

“The only people we’re allowed to train are new or prospective Strikers,” Yui said. “For a metric crap-ton of reasons, including risk of injury and lack of time and focus.”

“Well,” I said and slumped back. “Fuck.”

“I can guarantee that someone in the institute is going to be able to give you a few lessons.”

“That’s the thing though – I don’t need ‘a few lessons’, I need someone to really push me into training hard and building up muscle and learning moves until I can do them in my sleep. I need a _coach._ Otherwise it’ll be like these women’s self-defense classes that they offered at my college. In an actual life-or-death situation, I’d still be screwed.”

“You wouldn’t be able to use the facilities either.” Lenya gave me a sympathetic look. “Strikers only.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I stared at them all in turn, as though to check that they really weren’t joking. “This is an army installation, and I can’t learn how to fight?”

“Um, well,” said Ren, “this is going to sound completely nuts, but you could always just tell the general that you want to become a Striker.”

I’d been looking at Yui, but at that, my head whipped around. “Did you sustain _brain damage?”_

“No, hear me out.” Ren extended his hands in a placating gesture. “You wouldn’t have to actually become a Striker. I hate to say it, but you probably wouldn’t be able to, anyway.”

He was right, and I wasn’t about to argue that part, but I wasn’t able to ignore the other one. “You’re not making any sense at all, Ren.”

“I _do,_ though. The general isn’t gonna agree to single you out and allow you to be the only non-Striker who gets to use the facilities and such. Even with what happened, it isn’t something he can just _do._ But if you told him you wanted to train, he’d obviously have to let you use them, and he’d have to assign you one of us to train with, too. And then me or Yui could simply volunteer to do it. And you probably won’t be able to get through the first year eval, but you’d still have a full year of training that way. And if you don’t like it, you can drop out before, just tell him that you don’t think you can do it and that you don’t want to waste anyone’s time.”

“I really should not be witness to you lot planning this kind of deception, you know, I’m his _aide,”_ Lenya said suddenly and clapped her hands over her ears. “Lalala, can’t hear you!”

I turned back to Ren. “He’d never even agree to let me start,” I argued.

“He’d have to, I think,” said Yui, “because he let _Francis_ train for a year, just because he asked and works here already. No one set any conditions or considered suitability, they just said ‘Yeah, sure.’ You _know_ how annoying that was, the brass foisting Francis on us for an entire year when he didn’t even show up to training half the time and we were still expected to spend all this time working with him. You’ve heard us complain about it.”

“Hm,” I said and crossed my arms, because that sounded…weirdly reasonable. And I was still upset with Alex anyway, which made me almost want to go for it.

“There is one massive problem though.” Ren grimaced. When I looked at him expectantly, he sighed. “You’d have to spend more time downstairs, and that puts you at risk of running into Bishop a lot more often.”

I straightened my spine. _No._ No, I wasn’t going to fall back into that pattern of cowering in fear at the mere mention of the name. I was done with that. Now seemed as good a time as any to prove to myself that I didn’t have to let my fear rule me.

“Fuck him,” I said, and Ren’s eyebrows rose. “Seriously, _fuck_ that jackass. I’m so fucking sick of letting him have that much control over me, I don’t want to _not_ do it just because he’s there. Fuck him.”

“Well,” said Ren, “that was…a statement. I’m proud of you, and I hope that doesn’t sound all condescending.”

“It doesn’t,” I said. “I’m doing this.”

“Go now,” Yui said, “while you’re still all geared up for a fight. It’ll make it much easier to argue with the general.”

I really didn’t want to leave the comfortable safety of the lab right then, but goddamn it, I really needed to stop being lazy and indecisive along with everything else. I needed to _change,_ just enough to make damn well sure I knew that I wasn’t as worthless as I’d been feeling.

“Right,” I said and stood. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck!” they chorused, and Lenya finally pulled her hands away from her ears.

“Good luck,” she said gently. I was pretty sure I was going to need it.

*~*

“No,” said Alex. “Absolutely not.”

Well, it wasn’t like that was a surprise, and because I had expected it, I managed not to let my shoulders slump but remained standing straight, arms crossed, glaring as hard as I could.

“Why not?” I asked, carefully neutral. I was so glad Ren had fed me good arguments.

“I understand where you’re coming from, obviously, and I’m so sorry about –” He broke off when I shook my head. I so was not starting on that topic with him, not now.

“I honestly don’t have the resources,” he said. “I can’t assign anyone to train you right now – everyone’s busy.”

“So if I ask again a couple of months from now, you’d be just fine with it?”

“What? _No.”_

“And why not?”

He looked at me, astonished and exasperated. “If you were asking for a bit of self-defense training, that would be one thing, and I’d agree in a heartbeat, but you’re _not_. I’m really not sure what you’re thinking, Verena. You work in a lab. You don’t even work out!”

“Neither did Francis, and you let _him_ try.”

“That was different. He was passionate about it, and he had the willpower to get through.”

“You’re saying I don’t have willpower?” I asked icily.

Alex looked up sharply. “Not how I meant it.”

“Well then, how did you mean it? You know what, never mind, I don’t care. I’m not going to let this go.”

“And I’m going to keep saying no to you.”

“That’s discrimination.”

“Not really.” He shook his head at me, still baffled. “You’re seriously that angry with me?”

“Why the hell is this suddenly about you?” I demanded to know. “Just let me try. You haven’t got a damn thing to lose except, apparently, your pride.”

“I need you in the lab.”

“I can train half days instead of full, and I’ll still do lab work whenever I’m not training. And if this doesn’t work, which you seem _really_ sure about, I’ll be back there full-time soon enough, won’t I?”

Yet again, Alex shook his head. “I told you, I can’t give you a trainer.”

“Oh, bullshit,” I said. “If it’s not even full-time, you can wrangle up _someone._ Don’t give me that crap, Alex. I don’t buy it.”

“Well, yes,” he said and looked me straight in the eyes. “Yes, maybe I _can_ do that, but the only one who’s got any extra time on his hands because he lost himself yet another Striketeam partner _is Bishop.”_

And there it was. Maybe I should have seen it coming, but I honestly hadn’t thought Alex would go this far just to get me to give in.

I didn’t want to give in. I wanted to rage at him until he promised me someone different, but I already knew that wasn’t going to do a thing. So, my newfound willpower was going to get a trial by fire, I supposed, because I was _not_ going to let that asshole keep taking control of my decisions. I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the eyes if I chose to run away. There was a huge possibility that I would get hurt again. But at least, afterwards, I’d be able to tell myself that I had chosen to face him, even if it was only the one time.

“Fine,” I said, and miraculously, my voice wasn’t shaking. “Yeah, sure. Let’s do that. Time and place?”

Alex’ eyebrows rose sky-high, and that in itself brought me a small amount of satisfaction.

“Verena,” he said carefully.

“ _Time and place,_ Alex.”

He sighed. “If you’re trying to prove something to me –”

“Time. And. Place.”

His jaw clenched. “Fine. Bishop’s usually in the training area by five, so I’ll tell him to expect you then. Training Court E, the one at the end, with the large windows and the mats in one corner.”

“In the morning?” I checked, just to be sure, because I hadn’t pictured Bishop as an early riser. Well, to be fair, up until now, I hadn’t pictured him as much of anything.

“Yes. If that’s too early for you, I would highly recommend you apologize for wasting my time and leave well enough alone.”

“Five, got it,” I said, and somehow managed not to slam the door behind me when I stormed out of his office.

Well then. This was going to be…awesome. Safe and educational. Super fun.

_Fuck._

*~*

It was not super fun.

My heart was slamming against my rib cage with every beat, my hands were clammy, and I was shaking – and all of it before I even got close to the training area.

Training Court E wasn’t difficult to find. Like Alex had said, it was the last of the courts, large and modern, flooded with early-morning light that the trunks of the line of trees outside only partially managed to block.

On the far side of the room, right next to the windows, was Bishop, looking more pissed off than I’d known it was possible for a single human being to get. I tried to remind myself that according to Ren, Bishop had calmed down some during the past six months, but it sure as hell didn’t look like it.

“Right,” he said in that horrible, dangerous purr when I came closer. “You’re going to go back to Alex, like a good little girl, and tell him that you can’t do this after all.”

Right. I could do this. I could absolutely do this.

I crossed my arms and said, clearly, “No.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Huh,” he said, tilting his head. “You’ve got a voice. Interesting. You can use it to tell Alex that you _don’t want to train with me.”_

“He _knows_ I don’t want to train with you,” I somehow managed to force out. “But he also won’t assign me anyone else, so I guess we’re both just going to have to live with it.”

His eyes narrowed, close to imperceptibly. “I am not going to waste my time with this.”

“I’m pretty sure you have to,” I informed him, “until I quit or Alex says otherwise.”

For a long moment, he stared at me, expressionless. Then something in his eyes changed, and before I knew what the fuck was happening, he moved closer, snatched my wrist and jerked me forward until I stumbled, and then he lifted me by my waist and my shoulder somehow and there was a disorienting spin that nearly pulled my arm out of its socket, and my belly lurched and then –

Something shattered all around me, and then I _burned._

I lay there for what felt like several minutes, trying to process, to catch my breath, looking at the dark navy-blue sky without seeing it. It hurt like hell when I tried to move, no matter how I tried. Breathing hurt. Flexing my fingers hurt. _Blinking_ hurt.

Right.

Okay.

What the everloving fuck had just happened?

I’d been inside, and now I was outside, and that wasn’t really possible unless –

Oh.

That explained the needles-made-of-lava sensation across my entire body.

I remained as still as I could, and it took me a few minutes to realize that it was the crack of dawn and it was entirely possible that nobody at all had witnessed this. And so if Bishop wasn’t going to –

Oh, who the fuck was I kidding? Bishop wasn’t going to do a thing to help me.

So, basically, this was really going to suck.

I tried to figure out the best way to get up, but every small move made it feel like I was pushing shards of glass deeper into my back and shoulders. I might have spent an hour trying to figure it out, but it occurred to me that I had no idea how badly I was cut, so gritting my teeth and getting on with it seemed like the best strategy.

I decided to stop waffling around and tried to get up before I could change my mind, pushing myself up and gasping with pain – and probably shock, too – the entire way. The movement was accompanied by the bright sounds of many small glass shards falling onto slightly bigger glass shards that littered the ground. I looked, just to be sure, and…yup, one of the windows was missing a…well, window. Glass.

When a hysterical giggle rose up in my chest, I decided it was probably prudent to get to Medical sooner rather than later.

The nurse – today it was Peggy – stared at me with an open mouth for about three seconds and then hurried to figure out which part was the worst before starting on the first aid.

“What exactly happened?” she asked calmly, about half a minute in.

“Fell through a window,” I said. “Don’t worry, it was ground floor. Long story.”

“A window where?”

“Training center. How bad is it?”

“Not too bad,” she said, sounding, to my surprise, like that was actually true. “Astonishingly few deep ones. You’ll need stitches of course, and you’re going to _really_ hurt for at least a few days before your body gets started on healing below the skin. Did you fall through the window, or did someone push you?”

I sighed. “In case you weren’t aware, Bishop has a temper.”

“Oh my god,” she said, “I cannot _believe_ that guy. Why Alex lets him stay is completely beyond me.”

“Yes,” I said. “That. Is it normal that I’m trying really hard not to giggle?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, good.”

“I’m going to get started on the stitches now,” she said. “I’ll warn you right now, it’s not going to be pretty.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Story of my life.”


	11. Pivot

**Pivot**

_(the central point, pin, or shaft on which a mechanism turns or oscillates)_

I didn’t open my door when Alex tried to talk to me that night. I didn’t feel like listening. I didn’t let Lenya in either, but she told me from out in the hallway that Alex had threatened severe bodily harm followed by a lifetime in high-security military prison if Bishop ever pulled anything like this again. It didn’t actually surprise me. It was pretty much a given that Alex was feeling terrible about what had happened – he wasn’t a bad person, I knew that.

What did surprise me was that, when my alarm rang at four-forty the following morning, I dragged my screaming, protesting body out of bed and made my way to the training center.

The broken window in Training Court E had been blocked with cardboard and a tarp, and in front of it, Bishop was doing some sort of casual twirly thing with a staff like the whole thing wasn’t his fault.

He stopped twirling when I came in, and stared.

And stared.

“Well, are we going to train, or just stand here?” I asked. It was probably the most satisfying moment of my entire life.

Eventually, Bishop pulled himself together and tossed his staff at me. I couldn’t move my protesting arms fast enough to catch it, so it clattered to the floor, causing Bishop to sigh as he went to get himself another one. I was extremely curious exactly what he was going to do to me this time, because I very much could not imagine that he was going to give in.

Alex’ threats seemed to have had some effect, because the rest of the windows stayed unbroken, and I had no fresh cuts gushing blood by the end of it. I did have several from the day before break open and ooze as I tried to ignore the soreness in my stiff limbs in order to move fast enough to block Bishop’s staff, which was impossible to do in the first place because he hadn’t told me _how_ , and the fact that I collected bruise after bruise didn’t exactly make my performance any better as the hours passed.

I didn’t complain. I held the staff with fingers that wouldn’t quite close any longer and were slippery with blood from ripped-open scabs on my palms, and I lifted it as best I could to meet the blows Bishop rained down on me, only to be brought to my knees anew with every impact. He waited until I was done gasping in pain, let me get up, and then did it all over again. Apparently, he was prudent enough to stop himself from bashing my skull in with his staff, but not to keep from giving me a brutal three-hour-long beating.

I didn’t say one word, and neither did he, until he finally stepped back and dropped his staff on the ground.

“Don’t come back tomorrow,” he said.

*~*

I was so filled with anger and spite that I might have dragged myself from my deathbed to make sure I was in Training Court E at five the next morning. It sure as hell felt like that’s what I was doing, and I wondered just how long I would be able to keep going like this. Hearing Bishop groan in annoyance seemed like a good reward for three hours of him making me groan with pain. I was on my knees more often than not, trying and failing to rise over and over, all while Bishop stood over me with an expressionless face and waited. My cuts opened yet again, and I slowly but steadily dripped blood on the floor almost the entire time. Every time I finally did manage to stand, my vision tunneled and whited out for a second or two. By the time we were done, I literally couldn’t lift my arms, not one fucking inch.

“How long do you think you’ll be able to keep this up?” he asked.

I looked at him, straight into his unnerving near-yellow wolf eyes, and said, “I guess we’ll find out.”

*~*

I started running a fever that evening, went to Medical for painkillers and a fever reducer, and then woke up the next morning and all but crawled to Training Court E.

“You’re kidding,” Bishop said this time.

I held the staff, which was just about the only thing I could do with it. Lift it, not a chance. Bishop spent three goddamn hours negligently waving his own staff in my general direction, and I feebly tried to move mine to meet it.

“You need to stop this,” he said when the time was over with.

_“You_ stop,” I replied, cleverly.

“You know fucking well that I can’t.”

“Well that’s very sad for you,” I told him.

That night, Alex unlocked my door with his master key card and stood in the doorway with his arms crossed.

_“What the hell_ is going on with you?” he asked in a dangerously low voice.

“I _was_ going to sleep,” I said, looking down very pointedly at the blanket I had wrapped around myself like armor.

“You look like absolute hell,” he said, following the observation with a deep sigh. “And you’re avoiding everyone, me, Lenya, Yui, Ren. Look, I’m sorry I made you train with Bishop. I wasn’t expecting you to call my bluff, and I was angry, and I did not think it through. I’m sorry. Really.”

“Okay,” I said.

“You haven’t been in the lab for the past few days,” he said. “I thought you were just resting and recovering, but when I came to your room this morning, you weren’t there either.”

“Huh,” I muttered. “Weird.”

_“Verena.”_

I blinked up at him. “Alex.”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Avoiding your question.”

He stared down at me with an unreadable expression for long moments, then finally nodded. “Alright. Now obviously isn’t a good time to discuss this. I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

“Not going to be here,” I mumbled.

“And exactly where _are_ you going to be?”

“Funny story. I’ll tell you another time.”

I was actually surprised that he didn’t just stake out the hallway and follow after me during the next few days. Every morning, I got up at four-forty and endured Bishop’s negligent, annoyed staff-waving for three hours, noting with interest that every day, he looked a little closer to losing it and bashing my skull in with the staff. I couldn’t entirely blame him. I was wasting his time, and I was doing it on absolute purpose.

And I just kept doing it.

Slowly, my body started to recover. I apologized to Alex and my friends for my behavior, started sleeping in the lab so everyone would assume I was just working a lot, and while Alex maintained a healthy skepticism, I’d put in enough of an effort to convince him I was doing okay-ish that he left me alone.

Lenya, Yui and Ren were more difficult to get off my back, and eventually, I realized I was just going to have to confess. I was actually surprised I hadn’t run into either of the siblings down there yet, or any other Striker for that matter – although to be fair, I did make it a point to leave through the side door and not the main entrance every day, and I was there really early – and I figured it was bound to happen. So when Ren and Lenya came by the lab one afternoon and brought coffee and cookies, I stopped pretending.

“You’re so quiet lately,” Lenya said.

“I’ve had a lot on my mind.” I drank a tiny sip of coffee and then ate three cookies while she squinted at me.

“You’re doing _something_. Hiding something. What exactly have you been doing, Verena?”

“Training,” I said.

Ren lowered his coffee cup very slowly. “…training?”

“Yes, you know, the thing you do every day too?”

“I didn’t realize you’d started again.” He looked me up and down. “You’re not even fully recovered, I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Well, to be perfectly honest,” I said, “and I know you’re not going to like this – I never stopped.”

“I don’t get it,” said Lenya. “I mean, yes, you were injured, and then you were sick, but doesn’t that count as stopping? And who did Alex assign you anyway?”

“Funny story,” I said. “He never actually did assign me anyone new.”

“I don’t get it,” she repeated. “Are you training on your own then?”

“No,” I said. “Same as before.”

There was a long silence. Lenya still looked lost, but eventually, Ren sucked in a sharp breath and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Nope,” I informed him.

“Huh?” said Lenya.

“You’re…you’re still training _with Bishop?”_

“Yes, I am.” I shrugged at him. “You should see him every morning. He’s massively pissed he has to bother with me.”

Lenya made a choking sound. Her eyes widened.

“He’s going to kill you,” Ren said. He sounded intensely worried very suddenly. “He’s going to _actually_ kill you.”

“Nah,” I said. “Well, maybe. _Ren.”_ I waited until he was looking at me again. “I need to do this. I have to. I know it sounds insane, but _please_ let me do this.”

“You might _die,”_ Lenya burst out. Her voice shook. “It’s _Bishop!”_

“I know,” I said. “He’s fucking horrible. But a few weeks ago, I’d have literally run like hell at the sight of him, and now I’m in the same room as him for three hours each day while he swings a staff at me, and…I feel weirdly calm. I’m not sure why, but it feels good, I feel like I’m accomplishing something, like I’m _proving_ something, and it’s important to me. Please let me do this. I promise, if it ever gets to be too much, if I’m ever actually scared, you will be the first to know.”

“Against my better judgment,” Ren said, “I’d like to state for the record that against my better judgment, I’m not going to try and put a stop to this. Yet.”

“Thanks,” I said and handed a cookie to Lenya, who seemed close to crying.

*~*

“Hey, look,” I said. “I can almost do the twirly thing now.” I lifted my arm – it still really fucking hurt, but at least it was actually possible now – and started to balance the staff on my palm, then letting it drop to one side, twisting my hand around, and catching it again.

“Oh my _fucking gods,”_ said Bishop and rolled his eyes impressively hard.

“Thanks. I knew you’d be proud.”

“Go away,” he said.

“You know better than to think that’ll work.”

Jesus Christ. Sometimes, listening to myself, I wondered if I really did have a death wish. But Bishop hadn’t tried to maim me or seriously injure me yet – post window-incident, anyway – and I was fascinated and impressed by my newfound ability to not give any fucks at all.

My knuckles were always massively bruised and swollen these days, because Bishop was still hitting me with his staff, and he still hadn’t shown me how to block, and I was still too stubborn to do anything but try to block him anyway. On occasion, he seemed to barely care and wielded his staff with a lack of enthusiasm that was so absolute, I kept expecting him to just sink to the floor and take a resigned nap. Most days though, he was pissed off and annoyed and took it out on me. Once, he came to training utterly furious and managed to give me a mild concussion, a bloody nose, and a ringing sound in my left ear that wouldn’t go away for over a week.

“How was training?” Lenya would usually ask once I returned to my room afterwards. She had gotten into the habit of bringing me breakfast, because I wasn’t usually in good enough shape to manage going to the mess hall.

“Spectacular,” I would mutter while flopping onto my bed like Jell-O that hadn’t quite set.

“Are you sure you want to keep this going? You’re just taking a beating every day and that’s all. He uses you as a punching bag.”

“Yes, I know. The brilliant thing is, he hates every fucking moment of it.”

“Okay,” she would say, sounding no less skeptical.

*~*

Six weeks after the window incident, Bishop was the one to give in.

“Alright,” he said, propping his staff on the floor and leaning on it slightly as he regarded me thoughtfully. “I’m impressed.”

That threw me for a complete loop. “With what?”

“With your ridiculous, astonishing, unholy fucking stubbornness.”

I stared, finding myself unable to respond.

He sighed and held his staff parallel to the floor. “Bring up your staff. Widen your grip a little. Now step forward with your left foot and twist your body to the right. Your _other_ right. Use the momentum to move this arm up and toward me. No. You’re not fucking listening. Do it again.”

I returned to my room as though in a trance, eyes unfocused as I tried to process. Lenya, of course, noticed right away.

“What…what happened?” she asked, alarmed. “Do I need to get Alex?”

“No, no.” I sat down and blinked at her. “He just…I think he actually tried to teach me something.”

Her mouth dropped open. “Holy shit,” she said. “Like, you mean…I…what?”

“Yeah, I know. I can’t even…I don’t know what to do with that.”

“What the hell is happening?” she asked.

“Not sure,” I said thoughtfully. “But it’s very interesting, isn’t it?”


	12. Headway

**Headway**

_(move forward or make progress, especially when circumstances make this slow or difficult)_

I learned staff fighting, and it wasn’t pretty. Not that I had expected anything else. Bishop still beat the living hell out of me during every single training session, and the only thing that had changed was the fact that I now had a general idea of what I was supposed to be doing. Actually doing it was another story.

After five days, I absconded with one of the staves and kept it in my – luckily rather spacious – lab so I could get extra practice in whenever I got tired of sitting there and staring at numbers and graphs and runes. It was a surprisingly effective way to internalize the motions, and once muscle memory kicked in, I was able to mull over theories on magical decoding as I practiced. At one point, I noticed with considerable surprise that my arms had developed something resembling honest-to-god muscles, although when I tried to do an experimental push-up, I still failed miserably.

Three weeks into Bishop actually teaching me shit, I managed to hit him with my staff. It was a surprisingly solid hit to his shoulder, and he paused to stare at my staff and then me, nodded, and attacked me once more.

I still avoided the Strikers – I’d never felt welcome in the prism to begin with, and apart from Yui, Ren, and Chester, none of them had ever bothered to do anything but ignore me or look down on me. Mingling with them now didn’t hold any more appeal than it had before. That meant I couldn’t make use of the training facilities, but Yui was kind enough to assemble a set of exercises that she told me would work in tandem with my morning training to build up muscle and improve my constitution. So I practiced and practiced, I fought on the court with Bishop and then in the lab with my numbers, and once Lenya realized just how much I wanted to do this, to _prove_ something, she started dragging me out for runs every night before bed, which I _hated,_ but I came with her anyway.

Because if I was going to do this, I was damn well going to do it all the way.

I managed a push-up. I managed three in a row. I managed to figure out how to predict a few of Bishop’s moves and blocked or ducked in time, and every once in a _very_ great while, I landed a hit on him. He never acted surprised about it after that first time, or even reacted at all, but that didn’t make it any less satisfying.

Surprisingly, as the training started to go better, things in the lab got worse. I still wasn’t making progress. Sometimes it felt like I was going _backward,_ like the past few months had led me down a completely wrong path, and it was a constant source of frustration that the _one_ project Alex had left me wasn’t going anywhere. I’d had high hopes about corresponding with the Faerun woman in London, but the questions I had sent were answered unhelpfully or not at all, and I had nothing else left to go on. I paced before the mage-o-meter and squinted at it as though that would get it to tell me how I might go about connecting squiggly runes to what they _did,_ and how the hell spells were actually cast.

So, one day, after a training session that had gone surprisingly well – which meant I had collected slightly less bruises than usual and had caused Bishop to sigh or roll his eyes at me less than twenty times – I placed my staff back on the rack and then asked, “Were you around mages at all?”

His back was to me, but I could see his shoulders tensing. We never talked, not beyond basic instructions and things like “You’re pathetic”, “Do it again”, and, very rarely, “Decent”. I hadn’t seen the point of risking the fragile truce we’d built.

“What?” he asked, and there was such an obviously dangerous edge to his tone that alarm bells started screeching in my head. I _really_ did not want for this to go back to window-throwing.

“Never mind,” I said, and thought it prudent to get the hell away from him for the day.

To my shock, during a water break two days later, Bishop demanded to know, “Why’d you ask me about mages the other day?”

My head flew up. He didn’t sound furious, and he didn’t look it either. His eyes were on me, assessing.

“My lab work,” I said. “I’m researching magic and whether it might be possible to access it from here, but I don’t know the first thing about how it actually works or manifests, or…anything, really, so I’m not getting anywhere.”

“Thought Faerun was cut off from here, apart from freak accidents,” he said. His expression didn’t give away whether talking about it bothered him, or if he had any interest at hearing there might be a connection. It was just maddeningly neutral.

“Mostly,” I said. “But if I can measure the magic from here, there’s got to be _some_ sort of connection.”

“Measure,” he said with a slight frown as he screwed the cap back on his bottle.

“Yeah. I’ve got folders full of things I recorded that I’m pretty sure have something to do with magic, but since I don’t know how people even use it over there, it’s fairly useless right now.”

“Hm,” he said and then put the bottle down and nodded towards my staff. “Come on.”

The rest of training passed without words. I hadn’t had much hope to begin with that Bishop would ever actually help, so I wasn’t disappointed. I found it interesting that this particular topic was the one that got us to exchange non-hostile words for the first time, but I knew better than to ask him about it again.

The next day, during another short break, he asked, “What do you want to know?”

“I…what?” I’d had my mind on a trickier stabbing move he had just taught me and as a result was immediately lost.

The exasperated sigh was so familiar by now that it didn’t even bother me anymore. “Mages.”

I froze, because…oh. Was he…?

I hurried to answer before he changed his mind. “Are there different kinds of mages, or do they all use magic the same way?”

“Different kinds,” he said. “If you’re talking about arcane, I know of two, but there might be more.”

“Arcane as opposed to what else?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Divine.”

“You mean like…holy?” I flashed back to one of the chapters from the Receiver notes that I had pored over for days. “Oh, healing and such. Right?”

“Yeah,” he said as he placed his water bottle on the bench, and my heart sank a little because I knew it meant he wanted to get back to training.

“What is the difference? Do they use different kinds of magic?”

“Yeah.” And with that, we were back to staves, even though there were at least twenty new questions burning on my tongue.

I had to ask Alex to let me look at the books again, since he hadn’t allowed me to copy any of the passages. Our interaction was carefully neutral and frighteningly polite, which felt wrong, because before the whole taking away of most of my research, I’d truly started to consider him a friend.

It made me sad.

“Are you in the middle of some kind of breakthrough?” he asked when he came back from the side room with the lockbox and the three volumes I’d requested. “I know there hasn’t been much progress in your reports lately, I’m glad if you’re seeing some success.”

“I don’t know yet. I’ve got…a new angle, I suppose. We’ll see if anything comes of it.”

“I hope so,” he said. “You’ve been…different. Depressed, I think.”

“I haven’t been depressed.”

“Really? I’m not blind, I’ve noticed that you don’t come to meals a lot, and that Lenya brings you food. She hasn’t been mentioning you as much as she used to, either, and I’m not sure whether that’s because she doesn’t like to think about whatever it is you’re going through, or if she’s afraid how I’ll react. Either way, I don’t like it.”

“Why don’t you ask her?” I said tiredly.

“Because she, like you, hasn’t completely forgiven me for the decisions I’ve made in regard to you lately.”

I shrugged, because I had no desire to get into any of that. There wasn’t a point.

“Do you even feel bad about the research thing at all?” I demanded to know.

He leaned back and scrutinized me. “I feel bad about the effect it’s had on you, yes.”

“But not for doing it, or for the _way_ you did it.”

He sighed. “I still think it was the right decision, but I regret going about it the way I did. And, like I said, I really am sorry for the effect it had on you, and on our relationship.”

“Me too,” I said, trying not to sound bitter.

He held out the lockbox. “You can’t take those to the prism, remember.”

“I know. To my room and then straight back here tomorrow.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

I gave him a single nod of acknowledgment and left.

*~*

“So divine mages _ask_ for their spells, I got that,” I said during the first water break the next day, which I’d been impatiently waiting for. “Stupid question – _who_ do they ask?”

A slight, amused snort escaped Bishop, which was a first. “The gods, or the elements.”

That was…interesting, and completely confusing, but I’d have time to think about it later. I was a bit better prepared this time around and had a mental flowchart of questions to get through.

“And the arcane mages?”

“They…” Bishop frowned as though trying to remember something. “The Weave. But don’t ask me how.”

“What the fuck is the Weave?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

“Anything at all you can tell me about it? Something that might be super obvious to anyone over there? Like, right now this Weave could be a giant green frog in a wedding dress who gives out magic like candy for all I know.”

Bishop nearly spat out his water. For a moment I thought he’d choked on something, but then I realized…I’d made him laugh. _That_ was a complete first.

“It’s invisible,” he said eventually, still looking a touch amused. “And I think it’s just all around, or close to it.”

“Like…air?”

“Sure,” he shrugged, and grabbed his staff.

*~*

I decided it was plausible that the mage-o-meter might be measuring the Weave. I’d always compared its baseline output to white noise, which made sense if it was some invisible thing surrounding everything, neutral and undisturbed, until someone came along and drew magic from it. If it hadn’t been there unless magic was being used, the instrument shouldn’t have been able to get any readings at all.

So the clustered squiggly runes were, in all likelihood, a representation of disturbances in this Weave – particular magical effects. Spells, maybe. Hopefully.

How lucky it was that I had someone I could ask.

*~*

“So, mages. They cast spells, yes?”

Bishop gave me a look that suggested his already low opinion of me had just dropped twenty feet. “Yes,” he said very slowly.

It was a very good thing I’d toughened up a bit. That way, I was able to give him a condescending look of my own.

“Have you ever tried to figure out how exactly a car works?”

“Not really.”

“Imagine having to do that without ever having seen one, or ever being told about one, and the only thing you have to go off is the noises the motor makes.”

He considered that for quite some time and eventually said, “Fair point.”

“Thank you. Can you give me some examples of spells?”

“Not much. There were only ever two mages that I fought alongside, and that wasn’t for very long. They were pretty limited in what they could do.”

“Anything you can give me,” I said.

“They could produce light, or flames. Move shit around or make it float. Create shields that could hold off weapons. Cushion a fall. Go invisible. Shoot out bolts of fire, or acid, or ice, or just plain energy, or large, destructive fireballs.”

“That’s ‘not much’?” I asked incredulously.

He shrugged. “Far as I know, there are thousands of spells out there.”

That would certainly make things more difficult. But I’d made more progress throughout the past few days that it didn’t feel like such a large stumbling block.

*~*

I hadn’t used much of my budget lately, since I hadn’t known how I could even make progress, but after getting a slightly better grip on what magic actually was, I wanted to try and figure out if it was at all possible for me to access the Weave. In order to do that, I needed to figure out how exactly the mage-o-meter actually worked.

“Is there documentation on how it was built, or the kind of research that went into it?” I asked Gargar, having made a rare visit to the research wing.

“I don’t know,” he replied, all his usual unhelpful self.

“Find out then,” I said.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Excuse me?”

I tried to emulate Bishop’s best condescending glare. “When I first came here, you shoved that thing at me without any sort of information or instruction because you wanted me to fail. Alex is well aware of this. If I go to his office right now and tell him that you’re sabotaging my research _again,_ imagine what he’ll think.”

Gargar was _not_ happy about that, but he also knew I had a point, and a few hours later, I was holding a three-ring binder full of nonsensical, confusing notes and calculations that made no sense, diagrams that I couldn’t begin to interpret, and no obvious, useful information in sight. As it turned out, the mage-o-meter had been built by an autistic man – probably a Receiver – who had since passed away, whose thought processes I had little chance to understand. I tried anyway, of course, hoping there was _something_ I could glean from the messy pages.

“How are the spells cast?” I asked Bishop one day. “Do they say words, make gestures? Anything like that?”

“Both, usually,” he said. “Think willpower might be involved too, because the easiest way I know to stop a mage is to break their concentration.”

My heart sank, because that was a lot and I had no hope of ever replicating it, but I nodded my thanks anyway.

Bishop picked his staff up and twirled it once. Then he said, “You’re getting a feeling for predicting the movement of your staff – how the weight affects the swing and what direction it’ll bounce in off of mine.”

I stared at him for a few seconds to make sure he wasn’t fucking with me. “Did you just…compliment me?”

“Don’t get used to it,” he said, and thwacked my biceps hard with the staff before I could react. I kept my wince to a minimum and shook out my arm once before I attempted to hit him back. For the rest of training, he seemed to make it a point to be hard on me, as if to prove to me that what he’d told me didn’t mean much, after all.

*~*

I continued to ask him a question here and there throughout the next few weeks, but he knew little more about magic than he’d already told me, and if I prodded too much he would get annoyed and short-tempered and have so little patience that his teaching methods suffered. He explained less and hit too hard, and it just generally wasn’t ideal.

He’d never seemed like he cared one bit about what I did with the information I managed to extract from him, so I couldn’t quite trust my eyes when he showed up at the lab one gloomy December afternoon.

“Nice space,” he said, leaning against the doorframe.

I actually dropped my pen but was too busy blinking at him to try and retrieve it. “What in the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

“Wanted to see the thing that you said connects to the Weave,” he said simply.

“Oh. Yeah, okay, why not.” I shrugged and jerked my head in invitation, leading him to the far side of the room, where the vacuum chamber stood.

He frowned at it. “What is it?”

“Um.” I had a bad feeling that, if I told him the way I might have told Alex, he would whack me over the head with some nearby object. “It’s…the inside is made of strontium, that’s a kind of metal, and it’s covered with a thin layer of chrome, which is a different kind of metal. The whole thing is mounted in a vacuum chamber.” I brushed my fingers across the side of said chamber.

“A _what?”_ Oh fuck, he already looked like he might smash the whole thing.

“There’s no air in here. It’s been sucked out completely. It’s called a vacuum, like a…void, I guess?”

“Ah.” He took a step forward, extending one hand, and when he touched the glass, he sucked in a sharp breath.

“What?” I asked, suddenly very alert.

“Feels…like home. Sort of.”

“What does _that_ mean?”

He looked thoughtfully down at his hand and hovered it a couple of millimeters away from the glass. “It’s like a…not quite a prickling on the skin, just this kind of…really slight pressure. I don’t know how to explain it. It’s barely noticeable. I never even realized it was there until I came here and it was gone.”

Very slowly, I said, “You can feel the Weave?”

He looked at me and shrugged, like it was no big deal at all. “Apparently.”

“Why can’t I feel anything?”

He gave me an exasperated look and pulled his hand back. “How in the hells would I know?”

“Good point.” I squinted at the instrument. “That’s extremely interesting.”

“Right,” he said, sounding unimpressed, and left a few moments later without saying anything else.

The biggest revelation coming from that encounter was the fact that the presence of the Weave wasn’t confined to the strontium needle, that it projected outward several inches, only just beyond the confines of the chamber. I had a hard time figuring out what I was going to do with that, and so I took to moving my chair next to it and touching it with one hand while my other made notes or while I looked at runes and wondered how the hell I could possibly translate that to a spell.

It was difficult not to grow frustrated. I muttered under my breath about what the point was in being a fucking Receiver if inspiration never struck at anything resembling a convenient time. I sat next to the chamber again late one night after a difficult, frustrating training session and a day spent cleaning the lab because I didn’t know what else to do, and I stared at one of the runes in the folder on my lap and traced it idly with one finger as I thought.

This approach was a dead end, that was all there was to it, and it was time I admitted that to myself. Even Bishop’s surprising cooperation hadn’t brought me very far, and I didn’t think I was going to get a better lead than what he’d given me. It occurred to me to wonder what this particular rune represented, whether it was anything like the spells Bishop had listed. Invisibility, acid bolts, fire.

Something flickered in my peripheral vision. I jerked my head around but saw nothing except my hand resting on the side of the vacuum chamber, and for several seconds I was convinced I had imagined it.

Then I saw a wisp of smoke curling up from my finger.

“What,” I said loudly into the silence, “the fuck?”

I traced the rune again with shaking fingers, but nothing happened. I thought back to what Bishop had told me and tried to think of fire, did it again and again, and then there was the tiniest hint, a single quick flicker of a flame, and then an unobtrusive trail of smoke.

Holy shit. Had I just…

Yep, I sure had.

I practiced through the night, over and over and over, and it didn’t even occur to me to get any sleep, or even food. When my alarm rang, I finally managed to drag myself away, if only for fear of what Bishop’s reaction would be if I skipped a day of training.

I paused at the door and reconsidered that. I was making an assumption that I probably shouldn’t have made, which was that Bishop _wanted_ me to come to training, that he was in any way invested in this. Considering that he’d thrown me out of a window to avoid teaching me, that was a pretty damn large leap of logic.

“You’re distracted,” Bishop said during our second water break.

“I think I managed to cast a spell last night,” I said.

He froze and for a moment looked lost for words. I waited, and after a couple of seconds he shook himself out of it and demanded, “Show me.”

I brought him to the lab and demonstrated the rune-tracing as my left hand rested on the vacuum chamber’s glass, and by now I was able to produce something approximately like a candle flame with a slight green tinge, and keep it hovering above my fingers for two or three seconds.

“Yeah,” Bishop said once I’d finished. He sounded hoarse. “Yeah, that’s magefire.”

“I’m _good,”_ I said, very impressed with myself and not caring who knew it.

He stared at me and then simply said, “I see that.”


	13. Clapback

**Clapback**

_(a targeted, often viciously acute comeback intended to place someone in much-needed check)_

Suddenly, I had hell of a lot to do in the lab, and I couldn’t really slack off on my training either, so I was back to having virtually no free time. Bishop asked how my work was going on occasion, which was incredibly strange, although I figured at some point I’d have to get over the fact that he was turning out to be an increasingly complex human being, now that I was no longer scared to death of him. The memory of him pinning me down and slicing at my throat had gotten more and more abstract with time, and it now seemed to feature a different person altogether. Maybe that was why I was surprisingly okay with being around him – I compartmentalized.

The Strikers hadn’t been needed a whole lot for the past few months, at least not the entire group at once, and Bishop had been on something resembling house arrest for part of that time because of the window incident. Therefore, I hadn’t had to deal with him not being there to train with until he was called out with two other Strikers one night, and I wasn’t really sure what to do with myself. I went for a run until it was a slightly more acceptable time in the morning and then knocked on Ren’s door.

“I really don’t know what they went to check out, it sounded like something out of the X-Files, some sort of sentient goo,” he said. “But yeah, I can do a bit of training with you.”

After an hour of conditioning and then another hour trading blows with the staves, he admitted to being impressed.

“He actually _is_ teaching you something,” he said.

“Told you.”

“It’s a weird thought. How can you even stand being around him?” He gestured toward my throat.

“Not sure,” I admitted. “I just kind of…don’t think about it.”

He frowned, but then shrugged and said, “Hey, whatever works.”

We talked a lot more than I was used to doing during training. Ren told me what it had been like learning to fight, how his father had started teaching him at the ripe old age of four, and about how Yui and he had decided to join the Strikers. It was pretty fascinating, and I thought it was rude to run away through the side door when we were in the middle of a conversation. So, with a mental shrug, I followed him through the double doors into the main workout area. Heads turned my way almost immediately.

“They’ll get used to you eventually,” Ren said confidently.

We were almost to the exit when Alex came in, and when he saw me, he stopped dead. His eyes wandered up my body, then down, then up again.

“You’re back to training.”

“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” I said, sounding more confident than I felt. I had kind of liked not having him pester me about wasting the Strikers’ resources or time or whatever the hell his reasoning had been.

“Well, that explains a lot,” he said and then hesitated, apparently considering something. His expression was inscrutable. Eventually, he turned to Ren. “As long as you’re not neglecting your own training.”

“Yeah, don’t do that,” I said to Ren, pointedly. He looked from me to Alex and back.

“I won’t,” he said after a too-long pause. “Promise.”

“Good,” said Alex, clapped him on the shoulder, and continued on his way.

Ren turned to me as soon as we were out the doors. “He had better never find out I’m not the one training you. For both our sakes.”

“I didn’t technically lie to him,” I pointed out.

“I don’t think he’d see it that way.”

“His own fault,” I said. “If he’d been a bit more decent to me lately, I wouldn’t have felt the need to keep it from him.”

“Are you ever going to forgive him for that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, because I really didn’t.

*~*

“Did you train?”

I jumped about a foot high and turned to find Bishop standing in the door to the lab once again. It occurred to me that he was the only person I never heard coming down the hallway, for whatever reason.

“What?”

“This morning. Did you train?”

“Yes, mom,” I said. “Ren helped me out for a couple of hours.”

“Ah.”

“He was very impressed by how far I’d come,” I informed Bishop, and he promptly made a noise of disbelief. “Hey, fuck you. I _am_ a lot better than I was.”

“Doesn’t mean much.” He shrugged and pushed himself off the doorframe, crossed the room, and looked up at me with a challenging expression as he sat comfortably on the couch. “You couldn’t even hold the fucking staff on the first day.”

“I never even _tried_ to, the first day. I was too busy pulling shards of glass out of my entire body.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said and stretched his neck by rolling his head slowly back and forth “Forgot about that.”

“Sometimes you’re just _un-fucking-believable.”_

“Thanks.”

“Did you end up fighting?” I asked when he stretched his neck again.

“Yeah. An ooze.”

“…what?”

He huffed a brief laugh. “They’re these weird…they look like puddles of water. If you get close enough, they jump at you and start squeezing the life out of you.”

Well, that was nothing if not disturbing. “Anyone get hurt?”

“Little bit,” he said and gestured lazily at his arm. “Nothing major.”

He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so I wasn’t sure what exactly ‘nothing major’ entailed. “Cut?” I asked.

“Acid.”

“Well,” I said and grimaced, not because I was suddenly concerned about him but because the picture that immediately popped into my head was nightmare fuel. “How bad is it?”

“Just my forearm. Couple of splashes on my leg.”

I must have looked more horrified than I thought, because he frowned at me and pointedly said, “It’s a fucking _scratch._ Hells, you’d think I got my arm ripped off.”

“If you say so.” I crossed my arms. “Training still on tomorrow?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“No idea,” I said. “Never had an acid burn. Figured I’d check.”

He didn’t respond. Instead, his attention wandered toward the mage-o-meter, which I had – with infinite care – moved next to my desk so I could practice and test for spells a little more comfortably. I expected him to ask me about that again, but he remained silent, looking to be in thought. I had no plans to sit there in awkwardness, so I reached back to grab my notebook off my desk and placed it in my lap to get a little bit of work done.

Minutes passed. The silence, broken only by the scratching of my pencil, was almost weirdly comfortable.

“Chester said you’re the reason Elliot quit.”

My head flew up, because what the fuck? “Excuse me?”

“Was he right?” The question was so calm that I knew he couldn’t possibly have known any of what had happened. Then again…it was still _Bishop,_ and I’d be far, _far_ better off if I didn’t forget that he was more than capable of cruelty. I’d already come too far toward being lulled in by his relatively inoffensive behavior lately.

“Firstly, he didn’t quit, Alex fired him. Secondly, yes, it was because of me.”

“Why?”

“Because he tried to rape me, and I wasn’t inclined to let him make a second attempt.”

Bishop made a sound of neutral comprehension and then was silent. I wasn’t terribly impressed by that, but then again, it was better than some disparaging remark. Unbidden, a memory echoed through my head as I felt the ghost of a painfully hard grip around my wrist.

_‘Is that what you think I’ll do? You’re not worth the effort.’_

“Please leave,” I said abruptly.

His eyebrows rose, but he didn’t ask why, or argue, or do anything at all except push himself to his feet and make his way out of the lab.

I turned back around to face my desk just so I could bang my head down on it. How the fuck could I have forgotten about that even just for one single minute?

*~*

“Do you actually want to become a Striker?”

My head jerked up. It was the first thing Bishop had said to me at all since I’d kicked him out of the lab – no instruction, no criticism, just hours of repetitive sparring in dead silence. I hadn’t been able to interpret what it meant.

I tried to ignore the way his stupid unnerving eyes were focused on me. “Why are you asking me that?”

“I don’t think you’re ever going to be good enough. You’d be a liability to anyone who fights with you.”

I rolled my eyes and extended my left hand for my staff, which was leaning against the wall. “Always good to hear how highly you think of me.”

His hand snatched my wrist and squeezed before I even realized what was happening. The spike of adrenaline rushing through me nearly made my vision white out.

“I’m glad you find it so amusing that good fighters might get killed because of your entitled fucking attitude. I’m wasting time I could use for my own training by holding your hand as you stumble your way through the most basic moves I could possibly teach you.”

“Let go of me,” I said – mechanically, numbly, as I made a feeble attempt to tug free. His grip was iron-solid. If my staff hadn’t been too far away for me to reach it, I might have tried to see if I could get a good hit in before he pulverized my bones.

“Give up. Run back to your lab and play with your toys like you should have kept doing in the first place, because the only other thing you’re good for is target practice.”

I could feel the bones in my wrist grind together as he clamped down. The world seemed to tilt, and I felt the entirety of my focus shift to where he was bruising the shit out of me.

_‘Is that what you think I’ll do? You’re not worth the effort.’_

“Let go,” I said again. There was a rushing sound in my ears.

“If you think that your clumsy staff-wielding is going to translate into you being able to survive an actual fight, you –”

Something cracked and snapped painfully in my wrist. The world dropped into a strange sort of slow-motion as my vision went gray and fuzzy, and without having made the conscious decision to do so, I felt myself move. My free right arm crossed over the one that was trapped, and I used his grip on me to pull myself forward enough so I could reach _his_ staff. My fingers wrapped around it. I pulled my arm back by throwing an elbow in the general direction of his head, and I felt him finally let go of me.

He was too slow.

A fine, red haze trickled across my vision, and when it was gone, Bishop was on the floor.

Unlike my encounter with the werewolf almost two years ago, I’d stopped before leaving behind nothing but a pile of blood and shattered bones, but I certainly hadn’t left him unscathed. There were welts on his arm, the side of his face. Blood trickled from his lip and from lacerations on his eyebrow and cheekbone, and more of it bloomed on his t-shirt, near his collarbone. He looked dazed.

My chest heaved. I dropped my staff with a clatter that seemed far too loud, and the silence that followed it seemed to squeeze around my throat.

I was unable to move as moment after moment rushed past like I was an island outside of time. And then Bishop spoke.

“Well. That was interesting.”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and studied the resulting streak of blood for a second or two. I watched, motionless. My mind and body couldn’t seem to unfreeze beyond their most basic level of functioning.

After another long moment, he released a slow, soft breath and pushed himself to his feet with none of his usual cat-like grace. His eyes stayed on my face, studying it.

“That the first time you’ve done this sort of thing?”

“Killed a werewolf once, apparently.” My voice sounded like a raspy foreign thing. “Don’t remember doing it.”

He nodded in acknowledgment. “Next time, keep hold of your weapon.”

I looked down at the staff and stiffly bent down to pick it up. There was blood on it – not much, but enough to be noticeable.

Bishop’s blood.

It really _was_ interesting.

When I closed the fingers of my left hand around the staff, I felt a dull but very insistent throbbing in my wrist. Something crunched horribly when I attempted to rotate it. “Think you damaged something.”

He snorted. “Yeah. You too.”

I looked back up at his face. “Oh. Right.”

His eyes were still on me, as though he was searching, searching, still searching, as the laceration on his eyebrow continued to send blood streaming down his face.

“What?” I asked.

“You stopped. You could have kept going.”

_What?_ “Don’t think Alex would like me killing you.”

“He’d get over it.”

“If you say so.”

He hesitated before stepping over to the bench and picking up his water bottle, then took a sip to rinse out his mouth. The fact that he spat it on the floor afterward was of course quintessential Bishop, and I couldn’t be bothered to wonder who would have to clean it up.

“How long ago was the werewolf?” he asked conversationally after another sip.

Dazed as I still was, I couldn’t keep track of how the conversation was fitting together. I had no idea why he might care, but at least this was something I knew how to answer. “March, year before last. It was what made Alex take notice of me.”

“How hurt did you get?”

I frowned. “Couple of bruises, couple of minor bites. Didn’t get infected, obviously. It probably would have been worse if I hadn’t gotten the drop on it.”

That, of all things, got the biggest reaction out of him. He straightened; his gaze sharpened. He exhaled a measured breath. _“You_ attacked _it?”_

“Well,” I said. “Yeah. It tried to eat my cat.”

“Interesting,” Bishop said, again.

“Why is that interesting?”

He ignored me and drank another sip, used his sleeve to wipe some of the blood off his face, then turned away from me. “Still don’t think you’re good enough,” he said.

“Of course you don’t.”

“I’m curious though,” he said consideringly.

“About?”

He walked to the opposite side of the training court because he was an obstinate ass who couldn’t be bothered to answer a simple question. I waited until he returned armed with a towel before repeating myself. When he ignored me in favor of pouring water on the towel, I brought my staff around – accompanied by an agonizing throb of my injured wrist that made me grit my teeth – to whack his midsection. While he managed to block it with his forearm, the action still resulted in a pained grunt and hiss that were music to my ears.

“Oh, right, acid burn,” I said, not feeling bad in the slightest.

“You’ve finally stopped being _nice,”_ he said, as though not wanting to actively hurt someone was a disease he’d managed to cure. “Good. Give me the staff.”

I stared down at his outstretched hand. “No,” I said with incredulity. 

“Your wrist’s injured, and I’m a lot stronger than you. Give me the staff so I can clean it.”

I looked at him consideringly. He didn’t seem all that angry about me beating him up, but I hadn’t forgotten that Alex had once compared him to a sociopath, and for good reason. Then again, I hadn’t incapacitated him to the point where he couldn’t have simply rushed and overwhelmed me, so the fact that he was _asking_ seemed to lend credence to his words.

His exasperated sigh was almost comfortingly familiar at this point. “Much as I approve of your rudimentary survival instincts, I’d like to get the blood cleaned off before it seeps into the wood.”

I stiffly handed the weapon to him. He took it – I noticed he was careful not to touch me in the process – and began the task of wiping it down. I stood there and waited, but I wasn’t actually sure for what.

Eventually, he spoke. “Get yourself trained with a gun. I’ll start teaching you knives and hand-to-hand tomorrow.”

I stared.

He looked up at me briefly. “Got it?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now get out.”

I obeyed without question.


	14. Kinetic

**Kinetic**

_(relating to or resulting from motion)_

“I need to learn how to shoot a gun,” I said. “I promise I won’t use it to kill Bishop. Probably.”

Alex showed no reaction beyond a raised eyebrow. “What changed your mind?”

“Long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

I was not about to launch into a great big explanation or volunteer information he might end up using to screw things up for me again. “Well, the short version is that it goes along with the rest of my training.”

“And what’s the long version?”

“None of your beeswax.”

“Except it is,” he said. “I can’t allow you to learn shooting if you’ve got some…some hidden purpose.”

I huffed out a single laugh. “Christ, Alex. There isn’t a _hidden purpose._ I’m not planning to shoot anyone. It really is just because I’m finally doing something to stop being afraid all the time, and I want to learn as much as I can, not only melee combat.”

He studied my face for a couple of seconds and then said, “Fine. But I’ll be the one doing it.”

I hadn’t expected that, but I thought I hid my surprise fairly well. “Okay. I’d appreciate it if we could do afternoon or evening, or at least after ten in the morning.”

He tilted his head and looked to be considering the matter. “I think right after lunch will work best for the both of us – that way you’ve got the rest of the afternoon to work in the lab without having to interrupt. How is that going, by the way? Your report’s overdue. I sent you a reminder.”

“Yeah, I know. Lenya handed it to me and told me you’d be too busy to do anything about it for at least a week and a half.”

“That traitor,” he said, but he looked amused. I knew he was endlessly fond of Lenya and inclined to dismiss her every wrongdoing up to and possibly even including triple homicide, otherwise I’d never have thrown her under the bus like that.

“I’m making a bit of progress,” I understated.

“Good.”

“Are we starting tomorrow?”

“Sure.”

“I’ll get started on the report,” I said. “Might be a couple of days.”

He nodded as the corner of his mouth quirked up in a half-smile, and shooed me out of his office.

*~*

“Movie?” Lenya asked me that night after knocking on my door.

“Sure, yeah.” I stepped aside to let her in. By the time I had closed the door and turned around, she’d taken command of my tv remote and was navigating her way to Netflix.

“Where have you even been all day?” I asked.

“Um.” She fidgeted. “Came with Ren and Yui to the Japanese Consulate. You want action or humor?”

“Action,” I said. “You’re rather flustered, you know.”

“I’m not,” she denied unconvincingly.

“Yes, you are. Did anything happen.”

“Not…as such. Just, Yui asked me…she sort of…noticed.”

“That you want to marry Ren and have his babies?”

“Verena, oh my _god!”_

“Well it’s true. You’re head over heels at this point.”

She cleared her throat. “How about ‘The Secret Life of Pets’?”

“Action, Lenya, we agreed on action.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry, it’s been…it was a long day and a long drive and Ren was there the whole time, and he was…he was really…I kept looking at him. And then when Yui and I both went to the bathroom, she asked me if I liked him.”

“What did you say?”

“I denied it. She didn’t believe a word, so I begged her not to say anything to Ren, and she seemed, um, undecided. So now I’m worried she actually will tell him.”

“Yui is too nice to do that. How about Avengers?”

“Alright. But also, Yui is protective of her brother, so it could go either way.”

“True. Crap. I’m not sure what to say, hon. I can ask her tomorrow, if you like.”

“I’d appreciate it if you could. How was your day, by the way?” she asked, turning to me briefly to look up and down my body. “Doesn’t seem like training went too badly, from what I can see. Um, there is more than one Avengers movie, apparently.”

“Just pick one at random.” I pulled back my sleeve and presented my wrist, which now featured a lovely ring of black-blue bruises. “My radial nerve got a little squashed, according to Peggy,” I informed her cheerfully. “Hand’s numb, but it should get better soon.”

She regarded it with her lips pressed together tightly. “One of these days I’ll…I don’t know, really, but I’ll do something awful to him. Probably poison.”

I gave her a beaming smile. “I’m glad you’ve got my back. It’s honestly not bad though, nothing’s broken or sprained. I should be fine to start learning how to shoot tomorrow.”

“Have I ever told you how much I admire what you’re doing?” Lenya asked. “I just…it’s _amazing_ how you don’t let anything stop you, not even someone like Bishop.”

“If it makes you feel any better,” I said, “when you see his face tomorrow, that was me.”

“Really?” Her eyes lit up. “Never thought I’d say that, but I look forward to seeing him at lunch.”

*~*

“You’ll probably get stabbed at some point,” Bishop informed me casually the next morning. “Or cut. If you’re lucky, it’s only that.”

“Um,” I said. “If you could refrain from that, I’d be eternally grateful, because we don’t have clerics here who can heal that sort of thing like it’s nothing.”

“And?” he asked with complete seriousness.

I sighed and resigned myself to bleeding out in a training court. Why the hell I was still doing this to myself was beyond me – I’d proved to myself everything I had meant to and more, I’d long since conquered my fear, and I still didn’t actually have any desire to become a Striker. It might not even have been a big problem to switch to training with Ren instead of just pretending to. He wouldn’t push me to become better the way Bishop did, but that small inconvenience very much beat death by stab wound.

And yet.

At least I could take a small amount of joy in the fact that Bishop’s face looked bruised to hell, although I didn’t comment on it because, well, he was holding a knife the entire time.

“Is a knife the best weapon for close combat?” I asked when we took the first break. The threat of injury instead of just bruises had me jittery with adrenaline, which Bishop seemed enormously annoyed by, and he was making me use a breathing technique to try and calm myself. I wasn’t sure why it was important enough to bother with, and he hadn’t answered when I’d asked.

“No,” he said.

“When am I likely to use it then?”

“You aren’t. You’re not likely to use _anything_ you’re learning here unless the institute itself is attacked, and even then, it would be far from the best choice of weapon.”

“Great,” I said with a heaping dose of fake cheerfulness. “Are knives _ever_ useful then?”

I predicted a sigh, and promptly received one. “Strikers, which we’ve established you won’t be, sometimes need to use them. There are quite a few creatures over in Faerun that can’t be hurt by anything long-range, and a knife is easier to carry than a sword. If you’ve got one made of silver, it’s also useful against lycanthropes.”

“I didn’t use silver,” I said.

“I know. Must have made killing it quite a bit more difficult for you.”

I gifted him a sigh of my own. “If I am literally never going to use a knife, why are you teaching me?”

“Because,” he said with a shrug, “I’m curious whether you could actually pass the one-year eval.”

I’d never even considered that that might be remotely possible for me. “You really think I could?”

“Depends. If you can think yourself into the mindset you had yesterday, you might have a chance.”

“I don’t know how to do that,” I said.

He shrugged again. “Figure it out.”

*~*

To my complete surprise, Alex told me at the end of our first lesson that I was actually a pretty decent shot for a beginner. It felt great to actually be good at something right from the start, but my enthusiasm had to have given something away, because Alex frowned at me as we walked back.

“Ren not big on praise? I’m surprised.”

“No, that’s not it,” I kind-of lied. “I just wasn’t expecting to be good at this in the slightest.”

“You’ve got a good feel for your weapon, and you’re patient enough to not fire until you’ve got your aim perfect. And I have to admit that you listen impressively well. I usually have to repeat myself a lot more often when I teach.”

That was due to me having gotten used to Bishop’s teaching style, I thought, but I didn’t say it.

Alex stopped at the stairs up to Main and turned toward me. “You know that I miss what we used to have, right?”

I stared. “That sounds disturbingly like we broke up or something.”

He looked immediately revolted. “That’s…no. Just no. No offense, but that’s just all sorts of wrong.”

“I _know,”_ I said. “Why the fuck did you say it?”

“Because it sounded fine in my head.”

I couldn’t help it, I started to laugh. “You’re an idiot.”

He smiled. “See, that’s more like it.”

“Oh, well, if it’s the insults you miss, I can certainly keep going.”

After a moment, he fell serious. “You’ve been different, these past few months.”

“Well, yes. I’ve been training. It helps with the mental health.”

“It makes sense, but I do know you’re still keeping some sort of secret.”

“You’ll know when I have my report ready,” I said.

“I suppose I can wait that long.”

“Good.” I hesitated, then plowed on. “Do you know…if I had to, really _really_ had to, how I could purposely bring myself into a state where I fight without thinking, like I did with the werewolf? Without the amnesia, of course. I don’t need that part.”

He looked at me for a long time without showing any sort of reaction. Eventually he asked, “Who put that in your head?”

I sure as hell did not want to get into that. “You still don’t think I’m serious, do you? About training.”

He heaved a sigh that rivalled Bishop’s in intensity. “It’s…difficult to believe. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to doubt you, but it just seems so very _out there_ to imagine you as a Striker. I understand you want to train so you can defend yourself, and maybe we can arrange something to keep that going after the year is up.”

“How is the one-year eval done?” I asked.

His eyebrows rose. “You actually want to do the eval?” he asked disbelievingly.

“How is it done, Alex?”

“You’d go up against a few of the other Strikers – staff, blade, hand-to-hand. By then I’ll already know how good a shot you are, so we probably won’t need a formal demonstration. That part you might actually be able to pass.”

“Thanks,” I said drily. “It’s always so nice when someone has faith in me.”

“I’m sorry, Verena, it’s just…I hate that you’re getting your hopes up.”

“You haven’t even seen me train.”

“Do you want me to? I can arrange to drop by if you like –”

“Oh, hell no,” I said. “No. Fuck no. I’d be utterly distracted.” Also, he’d kill me.

“I figured you wouldn’t like it, that’s why I haven’t insisted,” he said. “I’m curious, but not enough to piss you off again. But that’s another reason I don’t see you passing the eval. You’ll _have_ to do it in front of people then.”

The problem was that he was right, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. “We’ll see how it goes. I still have five months.”

He turned, and I thought he was about to go up the stairs without saying goodbye, but instead he leaned against the wall next to them and looked at me. “As for your earlier question – I honestly don’t think that’s possible. If it were, I’d imagine you would have to remember how you felt when you were in that state, and then practice mentally slipping into it and back out. Something like that.”

“Interesting,” I said.

“Don’t get your hopes up, please.”

“I won’t,” I assured him. “I figured asking wouldn’t hurt, but I’m not expecting to be able to.”

“Okay,” he said. “Why did we decide to stand around outside in February?”

“You were the one who stopped,” I said. “Same time tomorrow?”

He nodded. “See you then.”

“Indeed.”

*~*

That evening consisted of an emergency chick-flick-and-chocolate-cake session with Lenya, because Yui had done the unthinkable, and now Lenya didn’t think she could ever face Ren again.

“Distract me,” she said. “Please, distract me. The movie isn’t doing it.”

“That’s because it’s stupid,” I said scornfully. “Sorry. You know I hate chick flicks.”

“Yeah. Thanks for watching it with me anyway.”

“Um,” I said. “I’m not really sure how to distract you, to be perfectly honest. You sure you don’t want to talk about it? Or I could go talk to Yui and ask her what the hell?”

“No,” she said. “No, that would just make me feel worse. I prefer to run from my feelings and never look back.”

“Alright, fine.” I thought for a bit. “My research is stuck again.”

“Still trying to figure out how the mage-o-meter works? Or have you gotten beyond that?”

“No, no, I’m definitely still dealing with that problem.” I grimaced. “All I know is that with the vacuum, the Weave radiates out about an inch and a half beyond the confines of the chamber. If I release the vacuum, the Weave’s completely gone, even if I reach in and touch the probe when I try to cast. And I’m not sure _why_ or _how_ or _anything,_ and I’m not getting any cool Receiver insights on it either.”

She tilted her head. “Is it kind of like a…a reverse balloon? Like, the Weave just inflates as the vacuum happens?”

“It’s an odd way to think about it, but maybe,” I said. “The problem is, I have no way of measuring whether the Weave field just pops up fully formed or whether it inflates gradually when the vacuum is formed.”

“Hm, yeah,” she said. “That’s a problem. You’d need a second way of measuring the field that’s not the probe itself.”

“Yes, exactly, and I don’t have –” I straightened up when a sudden, insane thought struck me. _“Oh.”_

“Oh?”

“Yes, oh. Will you do me a favor? Make sure my gravestone says, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’.”


	15. Backscatter

**Backscatter**

_(the reflection of waves, particles, or signals back to the direction from which they came)_

“I need a favor,” I said to Bishop the next morning, when I was busy wrapping up my forearms before training.

“Don’t care,” was the not entirely unexpected answer.

“Pretty please?”

He gave me the kind of look that made me want to hide in a fallout bunker and never come out again.

“I’d be willing to do something for you in return, if there’s anything you, um, want.” Now that I said it out loud, it sounded weird and sort of dirty. “Okay, don’t even go there.”

His grin was downright evil, but miraculously, he refrained from making a sex joke. “Can’t think of anything I want from you,” he said instead, leaning against the wall and giving me a look that managed to be condescending, skeptical and pitying all at once.

Well, fuck. I probably should have thought this through before approaching him, but I’d been too busy scraping up the courage. On the plus side, at least he hadn’t said anything along the lines of ‘What I want is for you to leave me the fuck alone.’

“It would help me figure out the thing with the Weave,” I said.

“So?”

I sighed, because I had no good answer for that.

When we picked up our weapons and made our way to the center of the court, I gave it one more shot. “There’s got to be _something_ you want.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, and then proceeded to try and slash me to ribbons.

*~*

The next morning, Bishop handed me a piece of notebook paper with a list of materials in truly terrible handwriting.

“I need these,” he said. “Or something I’d consider a decent substitute.”

I squinted at the list, read the first two entries, and looked up at him in bafflement. “What _is_ this?”

“Things I need,” he said like I was an idiot.

I looked right back at him with as much condescension as I could manage. “Going to need a little more than that before I can make it happen. Why are you asking _me_ for this instead of Alex?”

“Because he wouldn’t agree to it.”

“And you want me to go behind his back.” I was, to put it mildly, incredulous.

“Yeah,” he said. “You asked me if there was something I wanted. This is it.”

“Great,” I said wryly. “I don’t…what the fuck is tallow?”

“Mutton fat.”

“Of course it is. And…pheasant feathers?”

“You don’t need to read it all to me, you know, I do remember writing it.”

I lowered the piece of paper. “What exactly are you going to do with all of this?”

“Make a bow,” he said. “I never got mine back when Alex took me to the institute. I don’t like not having one.”

“Can’t I just…buy you a bow? We do have them here, you know.”

“Keep talking to me like that, I might just forget I’m not supposed to stab you when we spar.”

“I wasn’t…being condescending on purpose,” I said. “I’m aware you can’t leave the institute outside of missions. I have no idea how much you know about the rest of the world.”

“Enough. I know you have bows, and I also know they’re made differently, with different materials. I’ve used my kind for so long, I don’t think I’d be able to get used to something else.”

“If I find you everything on this list, you are _not_ telling Alex where you got it all.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “Maybe not. _You’re_ the one who asked something of _me_ to begin with _.”_

I was a terrible negotiator, so I resigned myself to sourcing some really strange shit and incurring Alex’ wrath right along with it. “Right, well, we’ll have to talk about it outside of training, because I’m going to need to ask a lot of questions before I can possibly find these for you.”

“Fine. I’ll come up to your lab later.”

“It’s where I’d need you for my favor anyway,” I said.

“Get to wrapping,” was his only response, and I did, because I didn’t exactly fancy him cutting right through an artery.

*~*

“I assume you’re going to need untreated wood?”

“Yeah. As close to straight from the tree as you can get.”

I tapped my finger on my lips. “What kind of wax? Beeswax?”

“How many kinds are there over here?”

“A metric shit-ton,” I said.

“I’m going to assume that means ‘a lot’.”

“Yes.”

“Get me several different kinds.”

I sighed. “Fine. What kind of resin?”

“Same answer.”

“You _are_ aware that this is going to take me a really long time, I hope.”

He gave me a pointed look. “Not really going anywhere.”

I supposed that was true enough. I laid the list on my desk and walked over to the mage-o-meter. “Right, so, I’m going to need you to put your hand in there.”

He raised an eyebrow. “That’s all?”

_“While_ I create the vacuum,” I said. “It’s probably going to be pretty uncomfortable. It’ll pull your blood closer to the skin and cause swelling at the very least. It’s not dangerous, just…might hurt.”

“Never had _that_ before,” he drawled.

I chose to ignore that – now that I thought about it, it had been a dumb thing to say considering who I was talking to – and waved him closer. “I’m going to need to tape it pretty tightly. If there’s any gaps, the vacuum won’t happen.”

“And _why_ exactly am I doing this?”

“I need you to tell me if the Weave field around the probe changes slowly or rapidly as the air is removed.”

I guided his hand and forearm into the chamber, positioning it so he’d have as much freedom as possible to move it around. Then I spent the next fifteen minutes duct-taping the hell out of everything.

“Can you feel the Weave if you touch the probe right now?” I asked.

“Not really, no.”

I set the suction to the slowest setting and watched as red dots began to cover the surface of Bishop’s skin while his hand swelled up. For a couple of minutes, nothing much happened apart from the obnoxious vibration of the pump annoying the hell out of me, but then, Bishop made a slight humming sound. “Starting to feel it,” he said. “Only on the thing though.”

“Probe,” I said.

“Fuck you.”

“Can you touch the outside of the chamber with your other hand? For comparison?”

Bishop did so but sighed as though that was a huge sacrifice on his part.

“Feeling it here,” he said, hovering his hand a half inch away from the probe. “Hand’s going kind of numb though, getting difficult to feel much of anything.”

“Still nothing on the other hand?”

He gave me nothing but a scathing look.

In the end, I had to stop the pump long before the vacuum was complete, but I thought the results showed pretty conclusively that the whole thing reacted, as Lenya had said, kind of like a reverse balloon. As the vacuum increased, so did the radius of the Weave field, as though it was literally being sucked through the Veil from the other side.

Now, the question was – how the hell could I make that knowledge useful?

*~*

I liked being on the gun range, because things went well there, and Alex continued to be impressed by how much I was improving in a relatively short amount of time. I hated being in the training court, because apart from the rare days we revisited staves, it was the exact opposite.

“You are fucking awful at this,” Bishop said one morning. “This and hand to hand. Absolutely and utterly trash. I think you might actually be getting worse.”

The sad thing was, I kind of agreed with him there. Maybe I could just give up on this whole thing, or maybe return to doing staff-fighting only.

I realized that Bishop was squinting at me, looking thoughtful as he twisted the cap of his water bottle.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m wondering what the reason is that you managed to improve your staff fighting but not this.”

“Not sure,” I said.

“Not a good enough answer.”

“I really _don’t know_ though. You think I haven’t asked myself the same thing?”

He kept looking at me intently, which I was no longer as allergic to as I’d been at the beginning, but I hadn’t exactly come to enjoy scrutiny-by-wolf-eyes either.

“Since we switched over, your heart rate has been high pretty consistently. You still haven’t managed to relax into the moves. The only…ah.” The hint of a smirk ghosted across his face. “You have issues being that close to me.”

That was…fuck.

Now that I thought about it, I was pretty sure that was true. But then, I’d gotten used to being in the same room with Bishop just fine, and I’d hated that at first too, so why did this continue to be such an issue?

Then I realized it had also never before occurred to me to wonder why the only time I ever felt uncomfortable on the gun range was when Alex had to get very close to me in order to demonstrate or correct something, and I knew perfectly well he was as safe as it got.

“I think you’re right,” I said eventually. “But I don’t think it’s you specifically. I think it’s men in general.”

“Well then you’re screwed,” Bishop said. “Not something you’ll get over any time soon.”

“Yeah, no.” I sighed. “Fuck.”

“You can say that again.”

_“Fuck,”_ I repeated, with feeling.

He made a sound of amusement. “You should still try to learn hand to hand, even if just for self-defense. One of the girls might help.”

“They all hate me, apart from Yui, and she’s hurt, so she can’t exactly grapple around with me at the moment.”

“Well,” he said, “then you’re still screwed.”

“Yes, thanks,” I said. “I hadn’t realized.”

He made to set down his bottle but froze halfway through the motion. “I wonder,” he said slowly, frowning, “if you’d be any better with a sword.”

“A sword? Can we…is that allowed?”

“For Strikers? Technically, it just has to be a stabbing and slashing weapon, so yes. But we can’t try it, because Alex won’t let me have one.”

“What? Why?”

“Because _he’s a halfwit_ who doesn’t listen when I tell him I’m three times better with a longsword than I am with a knife, and that it can make a difference depending on what we encounter on a mission. It’s also apparently not a common weapon.”

“Not at all, no,” I said, the tiny bit of hope shrinking as fast as it had risen.

Bishop shrugged. “Look. If you want my opinion? Give up on hand-to-hand for now, find yourself a guy you can trust, and have him fuck you – a lot.”

“I…don’t even know what to say to that.”

“Nothing,” he said. “Just get it done.”

“Get it done,” I repeated. “Great, yeah. I’ll get right on that.”

“Or go back to your lab, do what you’re good at, and die frigid and scared.”

“You wouldn’t believe how much I want to punch you in the face right now,” I informed him. And then, because I knew by now that he wouldn’t _care_ how much I wanted to punch him, I switched topics immediately. “Can we keep doing staves though?”

“Sure,” he said, clearly not giving a single fuck. I wished I could have done the same.


	16. Synthesis

**Synthesis**

_(the combination of ideas to form a theory or system)_

“I need another favor,” I said. “But I think you’d actually quite enjoy this one, so you’re not getting anything in return.”

Two weeks ago, we’d reverted back to training with staves only, and while I was disappointed and cranky about it, I remained dedicated to training. The same could not be said for Bishop. I’d noticed almost immediately that he didn’t push me as much as he had before, that he seemed to care less and less about any of it, and I figured it wouldn’t be long before he started refusing to train me altogether.

“What’s it involve?” he asked now.

“Stabbing me repeatedly with a giant needle.”

“You’re right,” he said. “That does sound fun.”

“Cool. You know the drill, just come up to the lab when you’ve got a free minute or five.”

“Might not have any.”

I wasn’t sure if that meant yes or no and chose to assume it was a no so I wouldn’t be too disappointed by his lack of cooperation. The problem about that mindset, I realized when he did actually show up, was that I’d forgotten to warn Lenya. She’d been spending a lot of time in my lab the past couple of weeks, hiding from Ren, who seemed at a complete loss for how to deal with that. Every time I saw the Sugiyama siblings these days, Yui looked filled with regret and Ren gave me looks that were alternately worried, puzzled, or helpless. The whole situation was pretty much awkward all around.

I looked up when Lenya made a tiny, terrified squeaking noise, and winced.

“Hi,” I said carefully.

Bishop didn’t acknowledge Lenya’s existence, which was probably the best-case scenario, and simply leaned against the door, giving me an expectant look.

“Right,” I said, and went to grab the needle, which was about the same size and thickness as a pencil. I was _not_ looking forward to this experiment. “This is essentially the same thing as the probe in the vacuum chamber, except, well, pointier. I’m going to…basically just be dumb enough to try and see if having it in my body makes a difference to just touching it as far as a connection to the Weave goes.”

“You’re right,” he said after a long moment. “Again. That sounds exceptionally dumb.”

“Yeah, well, Alford didn’t seem sure about whether it might make a difference, and he seemed to be pretty sure about most things to do with the mage-o-meter, so I decided it was worth a try to see if the Weave being in the strontium and the strontium being in my body gives me any kind of connection.”

“Who in the gods-damned hells is Alford?”

“The autistic scientist who built that thing.” I nodded toward the mage-o-meter.

“What the fuck is autistic?”

“Um…that’d be hard to explain in a few sentences, to be honest, and I don’t think we’ve got time for it.” What I meant was ‘I don’t think you’d have anywhere near enough patience for it’, but I didn’t say that because I was not a moron – or at least I liked to think so. Letting Bishop stab me with a needle might have been evidence to the contrary. “His mind works differently. He had a lot of ideas that other people wouldn’t have.”

Bishop held out his hand for the needle, and…oh, crap, why the hell had I thought this was in any way a good idea? Asking him to help had seemed logical when I’d tried to figure out who would both be unlikely to blab to Alex about the experiment and also have no qualms with stabbing a needle into my flesh. Now, that seemed like a singularly idiotic train of thought.

“Not until I tell you to,” I said, but handed it over anyway.

“Want me to hold your hand?” Lenya asked timidly.

I didn’t really think it would help. Also, I thought Bishop might throw up if he saw it happen, so I hurried to shake my head. “I’ll be fine. It’s okay if you leave, though, I don’t think you’ll find it fun to watch.”

“Thanks,” she said as she stood and started edging toward the door, giving Bishop a wide berth. “I…sorry. I’m not good with this kind of stuff.”

At least Bishop waited until she was gone before he opined, “I doubt she’s good with anything.”

“She’s very good at her job, and she’s a great friend. Anyway, I want to be able to get this fairly deep into the flesh, at least a third of it. What do you think would be the best spot for that?”

“Upper arm or thigh,” he said promptly. “I’d recommend the arm if you’d like to make sure you can walk afterward.”

“That seems reasonable,” I said and walked over to the mage-o-meter. I cast the fire spell – I could do it without the rune cheat-sheet now – and watched the green-tinged little flame spring up from my fingertips. It remained there for about five seconds before I dismissed it. “Just making sure nothing’s changed and I can still cast it.”

I wasn’t sure why I bothered explaining, because Bishop, predictably, looked like he hadn’t even heard me.

I did the same thing again without touching the vacuum chamber, and as expected, nothing happened. With a grimace, I rolled up my left sleeve and used an alcohol wipe to clean the skin.

“Right,” I said, taking a deep breath. “I’m going to optimistically assume that I can still manage to cast the spell while being stabbed, but I’ll need you to look at my hand and see if anything happens. There’s no way I can do both.”

“Fine,” he said, snatched my wrist to jerk me close, and hammered the needle into my arm before I could manage to react.

“Didn’t watch my body language,” he informed me calmly when I was done with my shout of pain and standing there hunched over, trying to get a grip on myself. “Otherwise you’d have been able to react in time.”

“This is not training,” I said through gritted teeth.

“Cast your fucking spell.”

I fought to concentrate and traced the rune as accurately as I could manage. Just as I finished it and while trying my damndest to think of fire, there was a tingling sensation crawling down my arm from the point where the needle was.

“Take it out,” I half-gasped as soon as I felt able to.

He did, which was impressive. I’d half expected him to stab around a little more first.

“No fire,” he said.

“Yeah, I figured.” I reached for the first aid supplies I’d had ready and began the task of trying to patch myself up using only my right hand. Halfway through, Bishop rolled his eyes, ripped the gauze out of my hand and did it for me.

“Thanks,” I said. “I meant to keep it in for a bit longer, but there was this pulling sensation going down my arm, and I didn’t think that was a good thing.”

“Probably not,” he said. “But then, it just might be. We could find out.”

“How, exactly?”

“Compare.” He nodded toward my right arm.

“Oh fuck no.”

“Thought you were a scholar. Don’t you lot try things more than once?”

“Generally yes,” I said, and regretted everything. “Well, fuck. Okay. Fine. Do it.”

He wiped my skin down with more alcohol and stabbed me with something uncomfortably close to glee. It was almost impossible to trace the rune with my right hand this time, but I’d never done it with my left, and it wouldn’t have gone well if I’d tried it in the state I was currently in. I did my best and tried to focus my mind.

“Out,” I gasped. “Fucking _fuck.”_

“You’re acting like this isn’t fun.”

I did not dignify that with a response. Instead, I pointed at the middle of my chest. “This time it went from the needle to about here.”

“Huh,” he said.

“Great, that makes very little sense. I have no idea why it’s different.”

His gaze darted from one stabbing point to the other and back. “How far did the first one travel?”

I tried to recall the sensation and then pointed near the crook of my elbow.

“Distance is about the same,” he said. “Did it stop before I pulled the needle out, or because of it?”

“The sensation didn’t stop, but it stopped wandering further _before_ you took it out. But the places it wandered to haven’t exactly got much in common, do they?”

I couldn’t really believe I was sitting in my lab and brainstorming an experiment with _Bishop,_ so I decided it was probably best not to think about it too much, or else my brain might implode.

“Maybe,” he said, “you should think about it like an arrow on a string.”

“As in, they meant to go somewhere but couldn’t quite get there? Maybe.” I looked down my arm. “That’d be to my hand. What exactly is so special about my left hand?”

“No idea,” he said. “Let’s stab you again and see if it follows that rule.”

“I can’t believe I’m saying yes to that.”

“Thigh,” he said. “Oh, you’re really going to hate training tomorrow.”

“You’re evil.”

“You noticed that, huh?”

I had surprisingly few issues sitting next to Bishop with my jeans half off, probably because he couldn’t have looked more disinterested. In fact, he didn’t look much at all except to the place where he stabbed me yet again with the goddamn fucking bastardly asshole of a needle.

How the fuck had I gotten from a boring life with my cat to _this?_

“Hip,” I gasped afterwards. “It went toward my hip.”

Bishop didn’t speak, but he did frown and reach out to trace a path from my thigh to hip, further up to my armpit and then down my left arm. “That does fit.”

“Oh,” I said, and then, “oh, _fuck.”_

“Oh, fuck what?”

“Oh, fuck, I can’t believe I’m about to let you do this.”

“Take your precious virginity?”

“No, you jackass, I’m talking about more stabbing. With the needle, I mean.”

“Sounds good. Where?”

I grimaced passionately and pointed to the base of my thumb.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, you’re going to _loathe_ training. And not just tomorrow.”

Apparently, all it took to once more stoke his enthusiasm about teaching me was the promise of seeing me suffer to this degree.

Being stabbed in the base of the thumb was agony. I was barely able to cast the spell at all, but when I did, and when my hand started to tingle, Bishop said, “Holy shit.”

I raised my head and saw a green flame flickering on my fingertips.

*~*

“Holy shit,” Lenya croaked, and no, I was not about to tell her that Bishop had said exactly the same thing. “You…cast a spell. Without the vacuum chamber.”

“Yes,” I said. “Now all I have to do is get used to walking around with a giant needle embedded in my hand. Sounds _great.”_

“Like, an implant?”

“I actually thought about that. Problem is, the strontium-90 underneath the chromium layer is radioactive. Being stabbed for ten seconds is one thing, but implanting it permanently would have a serious effect on my health and well-being.”

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah. That’s a problem. Do you _have_ to use strontium-90?”

“No idea. I don’t even know why the strontium is there in the first place, so I have no clue which properties I’d have to try and replicate in a safe way.”

“You can’t do everything on your own, you know. You can’t demand of yourself to be good at _every single thing_ to do with this particular research.”

“Are you suggesting I ask Alex to find me a co-worker?”

“We’ve already got people over in the research wing who are pretty competent,” she pointed out.

“Gargar is an asshole and working with him or anyone on his team would end in catastrophe.”

“I don’t mean Gargar. I know you have issues with the Bashirs because they’re working on the stuff Alex took from you, but that isn’t their fault, and they’re utterly brilliant scientists. They might even be more inclined to help you because I know that they feel bad.”

“They should,” I grumped.

“No, they shouldn’t. Alex made the decision. They’re just doing their jobs to the best of their ability, and they respect the fact that you gave them the basis for what they’re working on.”

“Well fuck,” I said. “Why do you have to be so logical?”

“Only when you’re not.”

“Give me a couple of days, alright? I’ll try and get used to the idea.”

“Okay,” she said. “But I really do think it could help.”

*~*

Lenya was – goddamn it – completely correct. The Bashirs were a married couple of physicists utterly dedicated to their science, and they appeared to be utilizing every bit of space in their shared lab for experiments and equipment. They were lovely and welcoming and only too happy to give me an overview of what they were working on.

I was reluctantly impressed by how far they’d gotten, especially considering they weren’t Receivers. Then again, their list of credentials was downright ridiculous. Yasmin had _three_ different doctoral degrees – high energy and particle physics, nuclear physics, and chemical physics. Malik, on the other hand, was one of the best out there in the field of electrical engineering, and he had an electromagnetism and electronics degree as well.

It was difficult not to be intimidated by this much brainpower. As it was, I was barely able to keep up with their explanations about combinations of different electromagnetic wavelengths and the different effects they appeared to have on the Veil. But they were kind and adjusted their explanations to a level I could keep up with, and they seemed to have an astonishing amount of respect for what I’d accomplished with my blind stumbling around when I had still worked with all three instruments.

“Your mind must be quite extraordinary, to have figured all of this out on your own, with nothing to go on,” said Yasmin in her high, melodious, lightly accented voice.

“Oh,” I said awkwardly. “Um, thanks.”

“So, what can we help you with? You came here for a reason other than listen to us prattle on, yes?”

“I don’t know if you can help at all, but I’m hoping so. Essentially, I’m trying to figure out why chrome-plated strontium seems to be able to reach the Weave from here.”

“Oh,” said Malik with a frown. “That wouldn’t be easy. I’m not sure we know enough about the Veil even now to be able to tell.”

“Well,” I said, “to be more precise, it’s not so much the theory of why or how it accesses it, but rather which properties of the metals are the ones causing it to happen.”

“That might be a little more possible,” Yasmin said. “We could design a few experiments. Do you have a sample we can work with?”

“I do. Fair warning though, it’s strontium-90.”

She waved me off cheerfully. “I’m a particle physicist, honey, and we’ve been working with x-rays and gamma radiation anyway. We’re familiar with all the precautions.”

“Alright then,” I said.

“Is that the only thing you need to find out – which properties are the active ones?” Malik asked.

“Well,” I said, “ideally, if we can figure that out, I’d like to find something that can replace the radioactive element and yet function effectively the same with regards to the Weave.”

“That’s an interesting puzzle,” Malik declared, sounding like he actually meant it.

“Little outside the realm of possibility for me to solve,” I said. “I don’t even have a physics degree.”

“If we all had the same knowledge and education, life would be boring,” he said. Apparently, his disposition was just as cheerful as his wife’s.

*~*

“Okay,” I said when Lenya came over that evening for our usual hour of chatting and hanging out. “You were right. They’re awesome. Happy?”

“Yup” she said, and promptly threw her arms around me, which surprised me. I also winced a little because the whole stabby needle experiment still had me sore as hell. Training that morning really had been awful, and Bishop had been more enthusiastic about it than I’d seen him in a long time. He had also kept targeting the areas he knew were hurting, because he was a sadistic son of a bitch who apparently lived to hear my various exclamations of pain.

Lenya pulled back eventually and beamed at me. “I’m glad you’re not so tense and angry about the whole research thing anymore.”

“Not about that part, no,” I said. “I have to admit they’re much more qualified than me to work on this stuff. The bigger issue is how Alex dealt with things, and I’m having a harder time getting over that. I’ve tried for a long time, you know. We talk quite a bit at the shooting range, but it’s always…I don’t know, not _tense_ as such, but not as comfortable as I used to be with him at the beginning. It sucks. I like him, I wish there weren’t still negative feelings hanging between us.”

“It makes him sad too, you know,” she said. “And he did tell me once that if he could do it over, he’d approach it very differently.”

“Well,” I said. “Good.”

*~*

The Bashirs, because they were competent to the point of insanity, were able to achieve a first result within ten _days._

“The strontium makes the connection to the Weave and allows a small part of it to phase through the Veil,” Yasmin reported, sitting opposite me on the couch in my lab. She’d come to visit me instead of summoning me, which I appreciated from a social dynamic point of view. “It’s a natural connection, but an inert one.”

“Like, all strontium-90 connects to the Weave?” I asked, feeling slightly stunned. “All in existence?”

“It seems that way, yes. But like I said there is no way to access it if you only have the strontium – the chrome layer is the conductor that allows the Weave to be drawn out from it when the vacuum is created.”

“Huh,” I said. “Interesting. So pure strontium probably wouldn’t have worked for my needle experiment even if I’d been inclined to use it.”

“Needle experiment?”

“Oh. Yes. Well. As it turns out, if the probe is in my flesh, it’s possible to draw out the Weave a little bit even without the vacuum.”

She gave me a sideways look and said, “You are hardcore.” With her lovely voice and accent, that sounded fairly hilarious.

“I try,” I said.

“The radioactivity of the strontium is at least part of what allows the connection to form.”

“Damn it. That’s what I was afraid of.” I contemplated it for a moment and then sighed. “It can’t really be imitated, can it?”

“Radioactivity? In general, that would be a difficult proposition, but if we are only looking at the way it interacts with the Veil and the Weave, it may be possible to recreate that with different electromagnetic processes.”

Because I hadn’t just been sitting on my ass for those ten days but had actually done my research on implants and the materials that were safe to use for them, I asked, “As for the chrome layer, does it have to be pure chromium, or could it still retain the conductor effect if you used a cobalt-chromium alloy?”

“We can find out,” she said confidently, and if I’d been able to lift my arms just then – Bishop was still targeting my upper arms like crazy, and it was slowing down my recovery from the stabby needle experiment – I’d have hugged her.

*~*

“Malik is certain that he can replicate the strontium connection with electronics,” Yasmin told me two weeks after our last meeting.

I stared at her. “How do you two do this so fast along with your own research?”

“Oh, honey, this is all we’ve been working on,” she said.

“Alex will kill me if he realizes I’m keeping you guys from what you’re supposed to be doing.”

“Well,” said Malik, taking his wife’s hand, “Alex doesn’t need to know.”

My eyebrows rose. “Okay then.”

“I’m going to need some specifications from you though,” he said. “Especially concerning the size of it. It will have to be bigger than the needle, but what is the maximum size it can be?”

“Um, well,” I said. “As small as possible.”

“Is it going to go in a vacuum chamber as well?”

“Ah. So, the thing is, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to Alex about it before I’ve had a chance to explain things to him, because he probably isn’t going to like this idea very much.”

They shot each other a quick look. “Not a problem,” said Yasmin. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”

“I don’t think so, now that we’re no longer dealing with radioactivity. Of course, with something this experimental, I don’t think I can be a hundred percent sure.”

“Well, of course,” said Yasmin. “That is always a risk with pioneers in their field. Just look at Marie Curie.”

“Exactly,” I said, satisfied.

_Take that, Alex. Scientist solidarity._

“So?” she asked, looking immensely curious.

“You remember when I told you about the needle experiment?”

“That you could circumvent having to use the vacuum chamber if the phasing happened in your flesh?”

Malik’s eyebrows rose. Apparently, she had neglected to tell him that part.

“Yes, exactly. And to a very small degree, I’ve actually been able to make use of the connection.”

“What small degree?” Yasmin asked immediately.

“Needle has to be stuck in my hand. Or, well, I think any place below the elbow would work.”

Malik winced, but Yasmin seemed unfazed. “So you want a needle that isn’t radioactive to do that.”

“I cannot make it that small,” Malik interjected. “It is not possible.”

“How small _can_ you make it?”

He bobbed his head in a ‘depends’ sort of way. “The smaller I go, the more expensive it will be.”

“I want to make it an implant,” I said bluntly. “In my forearm.”

Yasmin’s lips formed a delicate O as her face lit up with realization, but she did not make a sound.

“Oh, that is very interesting,” said Malik. “But I am not sure it is possible.”

“Well, fuck.”

“And you would need a power source, unless…” He leaned back and frowned at the opposite wall, eyes unfocused. Yasmin waited, and since she knew him better than I did, I followed her lead.

Eventually, he seemed to shake himself out of his headspace and said, “There have been fairly recent developments on microchips powered by body heat, so maybe it is possible. But very expensive.”

“How expensive?” I asked.

He told me, and I promptly cursed profusely.


	17. Friction

**Friction**

_(the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another)_

I waved goodbye to literally all of my budget.

I also waved goodbye to my personal savings.

I also waved goodbye to the idea of ever not being in the Bashirs’ debt, because they also sacrificed part of their _own_ budget to make the implant happen.

After that, I waved goodbye to ever not being in Lenya’s debt, because apart from the fact that she’d been there for me to bounce ideas off of and give advice, all without blabbing to our boss, she also used the resources she had at her fingertips as Alex’ aide to find a surgeon who’d be able to actually implant the most massively expensive cobalt-chromium coated, body-heat powered microchip ever in existence, and do it without asking too many questions.

And then I also waved goodbye to my own life, because Alex would legit murder me once he found out what I’d done.

I spent over two months researching just to make triple-sure I had the best chance of making this work, getting beaten up with a staff (although I did continue to improve), crossing my fingers that Alex wouldn’t find out prematurely (making it enormously tricky to spend any time in his company), and generally trying just to stay above the water as far as my ever-increasing depression went.

And then, I went and got my forearm sliced open and let someone stick a giant microchip right into it.

The damn thing really was large, fifteen millimeters wide and over ten centimeters long. The surgeon – older, military, giant salt-and-pepper mustache – looked at it with some skepticism but then shrugged and said, “Yes, it could work, if your body doesn’t end up rejecting it.”

I hoped it wouldn’t, because if it did, my level of pissed off would probably consume me.

I left the institute just after training one day and returned late in the evening with massive stitches in my forearm and something resembling a splint to protect both the implant and the stitched-up incision. And then I sat in my room, took a deep breath, did my best to ignore the miserable pain I was feeling and created a little green flame out of nothing.

*~*

I didn’t skip training, because I hadn’t ever done so before and I decided now was not the time to start. What I did do was get over myself enough to manage looking Bishop straight in the eye and say, “Do. Not. Hit. This. Arm.”

His eyebrows rose just a touch.

“If you do,” I continued, “I will do everything in my power to make sure you regret it, up to and including getting you put in prison, destroying everything you hold dear, or shooting you right in the head.”

I didn’t ask him if he’d understood or any such bullshit that would have only served to test his patience, but simply turned and grabbed my staff. I had asked Dr Bashir – Malik – to protect the microchip as much as possible while also letting my forearm retain a reasonable degree of malleability. I was pretty sure it would be able to withstand a direct hit from a staff, but for one, I saw no reason to test that theory immediately, two, I wasn’t sure how well it would be able to withstand repeated hits or a whole beating, and three, it would have hurt like all hell and set back my recovery, which would have been less than ideal.

I seemed to have gotten my point across well enough that he avoided targeting the inside of my left forearm directly, and training passed without incident.

“Does it have something to do with when you asked me to stab you with that needle?” he asked after we were finished at around eight, just as I was about to leave.

“Yeah,” I said simply, but then, because he looked just the tiniest bit curious and I was bursting to show someone, I couldn’t resist holding out my hand and letting fire dance across my fingertips.

He regarded it for several seconds and then drawled, “Well. You really are decent at what you do.”

“It’s fucking weird to have you complimenting me,” I complained. “Stop it.”

That seemed to amuse him. He knocked his staff into my hip as he stepped past me, hard enough to bruise, but also careful enough that, by Bishop’s standards, it almost counted as playful. I gritted my teeth to keep from making a sound of pain. I wasn’t sure why – I didn’t think I was misguided enough to want to impress him, except with my actual fighting skill. Still, I walked away from the court feeling surprisingly cheerful.

Of course, despite the fact that I’d actually become a pretty decent shooter, the prospect of talking to Alex afterwards made me feel decidedly less cheerful.

“So,” I said to him just before we’d reached Main, because it had taken me that long to work up the courage. “Remember that you kind of owe me one because of the whole taking away my research?”

“Do I?” he asked, sounding skeptical.

“I like to think you do, yes.”

He considered that for a moment and then said, “Fair enough, within reason. Why?”

 _Oh fuck._ “Well. Um. Confession time.”

“Oh boy,” he said under his breath and turned to me. “What did you do?”

“I may have…neglected to inform you about certain aspects of my research lately.”

To his credit, he didn’t immediately go off on me. Instead he gave me a level stare and asked, “Why?”

“Because I felt I needed to do something that carried more risk than you’d be willing to sign off on.”

“Risk,” he said flatly.

“Erm, yes.” I blinked in a manner I hoped would come across as innocent.

“Well, don’t leave me hanging. What sorts of risk exactly have you decided to subject the institute to?”

“Less the institute,” I said. “More myself and my budget.”

“So the risk was solely how much you decided to invest in it.”

“Not quite,” I said. “By ‘myself’ I meant my physical body.”

 _That_ got the reaction out of him that I’d been expecting from the start. “Verena, what the hell did you do?”

“Got surgery,” I said with a wince.

“Surgery.” He looked me up and down and then, unsurprisingly, focused on my arm. I’d covered up the bandage with a long-sleeved shirt, but I was still surprised he hadn’t noticed it sooner. “Is that why you favored your left so much today?”

“Pretty much.”

“Great. Now please stop forcing me to extract every tiny piece of information individually and _tell me_ what the hell you decided to do to yourself.”

“Um.” I swallowed. “I sort of…implanted…a, well, thing, and…” Fuck, I was still trying to draw this out. “You know how the strontium needle in the mage-o-meter connects to the Weave?”

“Verena, that strontium is _fucking radioactive!”_

“Yes, I’m aware. I found an alternative for the strontium. Well, not really me, more the Bashirs.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been collaborating with them?”

“A little bit,” I said. “Well, to be fair, they were rather instrumental in this entire endeavor.”

“Great. Are there any other instances of insubordination I can expect?”

I ducked my head. “No?”

“Being cute is not going to save you.”

“Just Lenya finding me a surgeon, that’s all.”

“Fucking hell,” he groaned and covered his face with his hands. “What _for?”_

I figured showing was better than explaining, so I called up the magefire.

“What,” he said, looking at it.

“Permanent Weave conduit.”

He seemed a bit lost for words at that point, so I extinguished the flame and looked straight up him.

“You made it my sole job to figure out the Weave. I figured out how to access it from this dimension without a vacuum chamber. And then I made it both useable and portable, and I shouldn’t even need to give you a reason for it, because if you can’t figure out for yourself how insanely cool this is, I’m going to lose all respect for you immediately.”

He studied me for a long moment while his face went through various attempts at expressions, opened his mouth and admitted, “Okay, you got me there.”

The relief I felt was palpable.

“But,” he continued, “if you ever do anything like that again, _behind my back,_ I _will_ fire you.”

“That’s…” I winced internally as my unwilling participation in Bishop’s illicit longbow project came to mind, “…fair.”

“Good,” he said. “I think we’re even now.”

“I think so too,” I said, “but before you hug me, I need to tell you something else. Not confessing, just…informing.”

“About what?” he asked mildly.

“Ever since Elliot tried to rape me…” I _loathed_ saying out loud, but then, I also didn’t want to pretend it had been anything else than that, so I spitefully put myself through it, hoping it would get easier with time. It was probably good for healing, too, or something like that. “Um, ever since that happened, I’ve had issues with, well, touch. Or not so much touch as just when someone’s in my personal space. Men. The issue is when men are in my space.”

His expression was carefully neutral. “It happens with me too, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I confessed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. I don’t mean to make you feel guilty about it, but I do wish you’d have told me earlier. I’d have modified my teaching. I’d noticed you were tense, but I assumed you were just focused.”

“No,” I said ruefully. “It’s been going on for a while, but it took me a bit to work out _why_ I kept tensing up.”

He nodded before giving me a stern look. “This time you _are_ seeing a therapist. No argument.”

“Yes, dad.”

“How does that work with close combat?”

“It doesn’t,” I admitted. “I’ve been focusing on staves.” And then, because it was now or never, “I was actually wondering if I could do sword instead of knife or dagger.”

“Sword.” He raised his eyebrows. “You’re not serious, are you? Never mind, I know you well enough by now. No, you can’t have a sword.”

My shoulders slumped. “Why not? I thought it just had to be bladed, and it _is_ a melee weapon.”

“Well for one, I haven’t got anyone who could possibly teach you.”

“Um,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Seriously? I had assumed that at the very least, Bishop knew how.”

“Verena, you just told me you had issues with men. You’re not seriously suggesting that’s a possibility.”

Ugh. I was going to have to tell him. I was so not ready.

“If I, um, manage to find an instructor, would that be okay?”

“Where would you? And even if you did, you know I can’t just let people wander into the institute.”

“Okay, but,” I tried again. “Theoretically –”

“Verena.”

“No, I need to know this. Theoretically, if I did find someone who wouldn’t create any of those problems, could I do it?”

“There would be other issues. I can’t see –”

“Okay but theoretically if there were no issues of that sort at all…?”

He looked very exasperated. “There’s something you’re not telling me. Again.”

Oh fuck, oh fuck, I really was going to have to… _fuck._

“Well,” I said. “Yes-ish.”

“What,” he said and took a deep breath. “Verena, I’m going to start on the gray hairs way too early at this rate. What exactly does that mean? Do not prevaricate or bullshit me, I am very nearly out of patience.”

“Okay. Fine. But I didn’t technically do anything wrong. I just neglected to correct an assumption that you made.”

“Which. One.”

I took a deep breath. “Yeah, so, the thing is, I’m not actually training with Ren.”

He tilted his head to look at the sky. “Oh, for…”

“You assumed it,” I pointed out for a second time, just to make sure.

“You still went behind my back to find an instructor, which was what I forbade you to do in the first place. That’s why I assigned you to Bishop, remember?”

“Yes,” I said. “Exactly.”

He waited, apparently assuming I was going to say something else. “I told you,” he said slowly, “not to prevaricate.”

“I’m not,” I said. “That’s literally what I’m telling you. I never switched instructors.”

It took a little while until his expression made a sharp turn toward dawning horror. “You’re not serious.”

“I am,” I said.

“Verena, he _threw you through a window!”_

“I know. It really fucking hurt.” I noticed with some worry that we were headed rapidly toward shouting territory.

“And so you thought it was a great idea to let that happen _again?_ And how the hell did you ever get him to _agree?”_

“You threatened him pretty effectively. And I didn’t ask him, exactly. I just showed up again the next morning.”

“…after the window thing? Literally _the morning after?”_

“Yeah.”

_“Why?”_

“Because it pissed him the hell off,” I said, and then continued because I wanted to get it all across before he blew up completely. “And I was so angry by that point that I wasn’t even scared. And he _hated_ that I was there, so I just kept doing it, and at some point, he gave in and started teaching. And I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s _working for me_. I’m learning things. I’m not scared of him, and I honestly don’t even think me being there makes him angry at this point.”

 _“No,”_ he said. “There is no way I can allow this to continue. I don’t care what technicalities you try to hide behind – you put yourself in danger, you knew I wouldn’t approve, you did it anyway, and now you’re expecting me to let you get away with lying to me repeatedly about it. I’m your boss, Verena, I think you’re forgetting that. These matters are my business, and there is no way I am allowing this.”

“Can you at least…consider it?”

“No. The answer’s no.”

 _“Alex,”_ I said desperately. “I just –”

_“No.”_

That appeared to be his final word, and a heavy weight settled over me like a blanket made of lead.

*~*

The next morning, I woke up at four-forty in the morning and went to training.

Apparently, Alex still didn’t know me well enough to anticipate me being quite that stupid, because he wasn’t lurking anywhere to physically stop me from making my way to the training court. Bishop was there, and he turned, took one look at me, and asked, “What?”

Well. So much for wondering if he’d be able to tell anything was wrong.

“Told Alex last night,” I sighed.

His eyes flicked to my left forearm. “What’d he say?”

“About the implant? He was pissed off I went behind his back, but also impressed. About me training with you? Frothing at the mouth, pretty much.”

Bishop didn’t show any surprise at the idea that Alex hadn’t been aware of him training me. I hadn’t been sure if he knew, at this point.

“Not surprising,” he opined.

“Yeah, I know, but he would have found out soon enough either way.”

“He tell you to stop?”

“Yeah,” I said, grabbed my staff, and made my way to the middle of the court.

I was facing away from him, so I couldn’t see his face, but I heard it clearly enough when he said, “Sometimes, I almost feel like you’re starting to grow on me.”

“Perish the thought,” I said, and neatly dodged his first attack.

At around seven-thirty, the door opened and Alex came in. It caused me to make a small mistake, but I caught myself and proceeded to ignore him as well as I could manage. He didn’t interrupt us, just leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and observed the next few exchanges. Bishop corrected my stance a couple of times and my grip once, which was fairly normal, but beyond that I felt like Alex might actually be getting a decent idea of my skill level.

Eventually, when Bishop generously let me breathe a couple of times after an exchange, Alex cleared his throat.

“What?” Bishop asked flatly and turned to him. I did the same.

He looked at me. “It’s a no to the swords,” he said after a long moment of very effective silence. “And to you doing the eval. And to you actually being a Striker. And you may _not_ neglect your lab work at any point.”

I tried to find a facial expression that would let Alex know how thankful I was but also not cause Bishop to lose the tiny bit of respect that he had apparently developed for me. “What changed your mind?” I asked carefully.

He sighed deeply and looked annoyed with himself. “Lenya.”

I really needed to bake that girl a cake.


	18. Focus

**Focus**

_(an act of concentrating interest or activity on something)_

About two and a half weeks later, in the middle of training, Bishop stumbled. That in itself was unusual enough, but the thing that really made me take notice was the fact that he frowned down at my feet afterward and asked, “What did you do?”

“What?” I frowned right back at him. “I thought you had me, actually.”

“Yeah. So did I. And I’m not usually wrong about that kind of thing.”

I threw my free arm up. “I don’t know what to tell you. I didn’t think I moved in time.”

“You didn’t.”

“What exactly are you expecting me to say here? I haven’t the foggiest.”

He let it go then, until it happened again two days later. That time, he lowered his staff and told me bluntly, “You’re casting spells.”

“Um, no. I think I’d know.” I raised my left hand in demonstration before switching the staff to it so I could, for no actual good reason I could think of, inspect my right.

“Might be doing it subconsciously.”

“That contradicts literally everything you’ve told me about magic.”

“I’m not a mage, so what the fuck do I know.” He was starting to sound annoyed.

“Right.” I tried to figure out how to approach this in a way that wouldn’t tick him off completely. “Maybe it’s because Faerun mages are surrounded by the Weave, but it isn’t inside them like it is me.”

“Mh,” he said, but didn’t seem to be in a brainstorming kind of mood. I tried anyway.

“Any ideas how I can find out whether that’s correct?”

Miraculously, he indulged me. “What went through your head when it happened, this time?”

“Mostly it was ‘fuck!’ and the realization that it was going to start hurting any moment.” I thought about that. “You think it’s the emotion? Dread?”

“Maybe,” he said and swung the staff at my head. I saw it coming, but I had too little time to react, so it connected, hard. “Maybe not.”

“Oh, fuck you right in the ear,” I said, which, by the sound of it, he found mildly amusing. I resolved to creatively swear more often – when I could see again and was no longer doubled over while holding what was definitely about to turn into an enormous bump. “Did it have to be my head? Never mind, I already know the answer to that.”

“Smart girl.”

The third time, he didn’t quite stumble, but he was noticeably off balance. I was ready, and instead of being baffled by it, I immediately zeroed in on everything I’d felt in the past two or three seconds. Sharp focus, a sudden spike of ‘oh shit’, and then a tingling sensation in my left hand, which had been _off_ the staff at the time. I tried to think back to the other two instances and thought I might have found a pattern.

“Alright,” I said as I raised my hand to signal for a pause. I breathed deeply and laid my staff on the ground. “I have a theory.”

He looked annoyed and impatient, but I thought the prospect of hurting me outside of actual sparring might appeal to him.

“Why do I always end up letting you do these things?” I lamented as I held out my right arm, making sure to keep from clenching my left into a fist. “Please try not to do too much damage.”

The dread was more of a wave than a spike now that I had advance warning. To compensate – if there was a need for compensating, I wasn’t sure – I focused as hard as I could on my arm and the idea of the staff passing right through it.

And that was what happened.

“Holy shit,” I said.

Bishop was less surprised and more pragmatic. “We can work with that.”

“What do you mean?”

He promptly rolled his eyes. “In case you hadn’t noticed, that gives you an advantage.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well. I guess, yeah.”

“You guess.” He sighed and twirled his staff.

“Is guessing not allowed?”

“Depends,” he said. “Lucky for you, I’m in a good mood.”

“Holy shit,” I said yet again, exaggeratedly widening my eyes. “And here I thought the _magic_ was exciting.”

The corner of his mouth twitched.

*~*

Although I was aware to a certain extent that I now found Bishop far less terrifying than I had before he’d started training me, I didn’t fully realize just how stark the difference was until the night I came upon him drunk, and I didn’t run.

I usually ended up sleeping in the lab when I stayed there very late, so I wasn’t ever out and about after hours, but then came the night when I realized I’d left my phone in the back pocket of my _other_ jeans, and the damn thing was my alarm clock. I still wasn’t used to getting up at four-forty in the morning, probably never would be, and not even leaving my curtains open for the early-morning August sunrise would have helped to get me to wake, so I didn’t have much of a choice but to make my way across campus and get it. I got to Res without incident and was on my way up the stairs when something moved in the shadows.

The similarity of this and the night I’d received the scar on my throat was uncanny, but even though my breath came short and my heart hammered like crazy, I kept my chin up and stood firm.

“Can hear you breathing,” Bishop informed me from somewhere in the shadows. He was slurring his words, and just as I was able to make out more than darkness in the direction his voice was coming from, I heard liquid sloshing around in a bottle.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I said.

“What?” he asked aggressively. “’S true. You’d be a terrible hunter.”

I could tell now that he was sitting against the wall opposite the emergency exit, slightly slumped, one leg stretched out.

“I suppose,” I said drily, “that I should count myself lucky indeed that I’ve never had any kind of inclination to become one.”

“Shorter sentences,” he mumbled after a moment. “Use shorter sentences. Or smaller words.”

“Yes, your majesty.”

I could see enough now to realize he was squinting up at me. “Your fucking attitude,” he said, “reminds me of…of…something.”

Well that was informative. “Is that good or bad?”

“Bad,” he muttered. “Very bad. Want to fucking choke you sometimes.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Sit,” he said.

“Why in the world should I?”

He gestured to the empty spot next to him. “Fucking sit.”

“You just told me you wanted to choke me,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, so?”

I sighed and went to sit. “Just so you know, you’re utterly pathetic right now,” I said before I could help it. It occurred to me to wonder exactly how pissed off he might be tomorrow – if he remembered it, that was. He seemed pretty far gone this time.

He held out his bottle, which smelled sharply of booze – whiskey, I thought, although I wasn’t much of a drinker and therefore not exactly an expert.

“No thanks. Keep your backwash to yourself.”

He pulled his hand back and then banged the back of his head against the wall so hard that the noise made me jump. “I hate it here. I fucking hate it. Everything is wrong.”

Yeah, I could kinda see that, if I was being honest. Faerun was _very_ different, and he was stuck here.

“Sorry,” I said, for lack of a better answer.

“Sometimes,” he said with a sigh, “I like you. Mostly no.”

“Oh my god, you are so drunk right now it’s ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed and sighed again.

I patted his shoulder. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”

He got up, surprisingly acquiescent. When he wobbled, I reached out to steady him and then resigned myself to looping his arm around my shoulders so I could guide and assist him using the universally popular sort-of-half-carry for drunk people.

“Where’s your room?” I asked.

“Don’t remember. Was going to sleep here.”

“Fucking god. Where’s your key card?”

“Somewhere,” he said helpfully.

I patted down his pockets and eventually found the damn thing, relieved to see the room number, because now I knew I wouldn’t have to get him up the stairs. “Come on.”

It took almost ten minutes before we made it to our destination, mostly because Bishop kept stopping and trying to fall asleep standing. I was tempted to just open the door, shove him in and leave, but apparently I was too nice for that, because instead I deposited him on his bed and turned the lamp on his nightstand on so I could see enough to be able to find him a vomit receptacle of some kind. The bathroom trash can was the best I could do, so I returned to the main room and placed it by the side of the bed.

“’S that?” Bishop asked as he threw one shoe clumsily into a corner of the room.

_“That_ is me being way too nice to you.”

He threw away his other shoe and then reached up to take his shirt off, and it occurred to me that I should probably say my goodbyes before I unwillingly found out exactly how few clothes he wore for sleeping.

The next moment, the thought vanished from my head, and my heart dropped, because even in the very sparse light, I could clearly see the evidence of the fucked-up life he’d had. His torso was, _literally,_ more scars than unmarked skin. A large portion of it was burn scars on his sides and back, but there were others too, distributed all over the place – welts, small, puckered dots, unevenly textured patches, and, most disturbingly, a fucking _brand_ on his shoulder blade. Yes, it was Bishop, and he was an ass and all, but… _fuck._

I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t, and I knew that if I ever even hinted at having seen them, I wouldn’t like the consequences. I _so_ had not been prepared for this. There was one scar I’d occasionally caught a glimpse of during training, when the sleeve of his shirt rode up, and there were a couple of smaller, unobtrusive ones on his arms, and obviously I’d known he had to have collected his fair share of marks with the life he’d lived in Faerun, but still, I hadn’t expected _this._

And now I actually felt awful for him, which… _seriously?_

“Good night,” I said softly, and then I left.

*~*

I wasn’t about to break my perfect streak, so I showed up on the training court at five as usual, intending to do drills. To my complete and utter shock, Bishop was there. He looked like hell on a plate, but he still stood there, staff in hand.

“How in the fuck are you functioning?” I asked.

He frowned at me. “What?”

“You. Functioning. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone being immune to hangovers of that magnitude.”

“Ah,” he said. “You saw me last night, I suppose?”

“You don’t remember?”

He stared at me with bloodshot eyes. “Do I look like I remember?”

“No,” I admitted. “Not sure you’d want to, either.”

He smirked. “No? Why? Did we fuck and it was just awful?”

“Thankfully, no. Although it was a _really_ close call.” I rolled my eyes. “I helped you back to your room, jackass.”

“Ah,” he said. “I wondered why I was there.”

“It’s your room. You’re supposed to sleep in it.”

“Is that right,” he said. “I did wonder why they gave me one. Figured it wasn’t important.”

I made a sound of amusement and then watched as he twirled his staff again. “So, are we going to train, or just reminisce about the wonderful time we had last night?”

“Careful,” he said, his tone dropping. “I might start thinking you _want_ me to beat the living hells out of you.”

“Sounds delightful,” I said, because self-preservation was overrated. This time, his smirk was undeniably evil as he raised his staff.

*~*

The next day, in the afternoon, Bishop came into the lab.

“Hi?” I said carefully when I saw him standing in the doorway.

He raised an eyebrow. “That a question?”

“Wondering what you’re doing here, I suppose. Not that…you’re not…welcome.” I frowned. Holy crap, I was _really_ thrown off by his sudden appearance without a solid explanation.

“Suppose I’ll take it,” he shrugged and walked over to the couch. “You never come anywhere else in the prism.”

“That’s because most of the Strikers hate me.”

“Nah,” he said, and frowned. “Well, maybe they do.”

I snorted and shook my head at him.

“You don’t like them much either,” he noted.

“Well, no. The only ones who have ever even _tried_ to be decent to me are Ren, Yui, and Chester. The others either think I’m worthless, make fun of me, try to intimidate me, or, you know, fucking try to rape me. So…no, I’m not a fan.”

“Mh, yeah, suppose I can see your point.” He tilted his head. “Leslie told me once that you avoided everyone because you were afraid of me.”

“Well, yes, for good fucking reason.”

He smirked. “And yet you’re stupid enough to train with me.” Before I had a chance to argue the hell out of that statement, he nodded in the direction of my desk. “Been making any progress with spells?”

“Mostly no.”

“Mostly?”

“Found some patterns between different runes, so I can tell fire-type spells from other ones now. Doesn’t really do much though. See?” I traced a rune with my right and pointed at him with my left index finger. A tiny, brilliantly red fire projectile shot out from it, fizzling out after a couple of inches.

“All you need is practice,” he commented.

“What I _need_ is practical spells, something to get stronger and faster, and to get dudes I don’t like the fuck off of me so I can stop panicking whenever someone comes near me.”

I hadn’t planned on that sort of outburst, but Bishop looked utterly unbothered. He frowned and scratched his neck and seemed to think for a long moment. Then he said, “What about lightning?”

“What _about_ lightning?”

“Well, or…” He gestured at the world in general. “Electricity. I know there’s quite a few different spells that use it. You should see if you’ve got one somewhere in there.”

“Are you telling me I should start shooting lightning at people?”

“No, I don’t think you could, not right away. But when –” He hesitated, surprising me.

“When?” I asked carefully.

“I spent a bit of time in one of the larger cities that had a mage academy, not long before I was pulled into this very interesting hellhole over here. Didn’t really ever talk to any of the students when I encountered them, but I did see quite a few of the girl ones use a particular spell when someone got too close for their liking. They just…” He raised his hand, palm out. “They put a little bit of lightning into their hand, somehow, and when they pushed someone away, that person usually had the good sense to _stay_ away. Looked like it wasn’t pleasant. Wasn’t ever stupid enough to find out for myself, though.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes. That does sound effective. Thanks.”

He shrugged. “And if that doesn’t work, why don’t you try and make yourself stronger for just a second, like you willed yourself incorporeal?”

I stared at him for a long moment, frozen, and then I said, “Holy fuck, you’re a genius.”

He chuckled – actual, amused chuckling without a sarcastic undertone, which wasn’t something I’d ever heard from him. “I’ve been called quite a lot of things, you know, but I don’t think _that_ was ever one.”

“Bet most of them were a lot less flattering,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “They were.”

“Shocker.”

He gave me a calculating look. “What’s the worst thing you’ve been called?”

I thought for a moment, then hesitated, because it was actually a pretty personal question, and I worried the answer might tell him far too much about the sorts of things that hurt me. There were several insults that came to mind, but I settled on one that had happened a long time ago and therefore didn’t feel raw at all. “Does ‘frigid slut’ count?”

“Tame,” he said. “Also makes less than no sense.”

“You’re telling me. But, to be honest, I don’t think it was the insult itself that was so terrible, more who it was coming from.”

“Hm.” He lowered his gaze and frowned at the floor. “Think I might actually get that.”

I was surprised by that – less the fact itself and more that he was admitting it – but I tried my best not to let him notice.

*~*

It took me almost two months to work out the taser spell, as I’d taken to calling it. Lenya was an invaluable cheerleader, and _damn,_ I loved that girl. She checked in on me at least once a day to make sure I hadn’t despaired and given up, and she spent most of her free time at the lab with me as I went through rune after rune after rune. And then, after I’d finally felt my fingertips tingle with the slightest hint of static electricity, she made sure I kept practicing until finally, I put my hand on the wall one day accompanied by a snapping, crackling sound, and when I pulled it away, there was near-black mark and the air smelled of ozone.

“Holy fuck,” Lenya said.

“I love it when you have that reaction,” I told her. “If you curse, I know it’s important.”

She stood up and walked over to the mark, and after a moment of hesitation she stretched out her arm and brushed one finger across it. “You could really do some damage with that,” she said thoughtfully.

“I should try and modulate it. Have different levels of intensity, like, ‘fair warning’, ‘you asked for it’, and ‘die, asshole’.”

She giggled, which reminded me of something I’d been meaning to ask her.

“Am I crazy or has Bishop become slightly more relaxed?” I asked. “It’s hard for me to tell if it’s that or if I’ve just gotten used to him.”

“Verena, there is no way I’d know that because I’m very careful not to come within twenty feet of him.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Good point.”

“Alex did say a while back though that he’s relieved Bishop seems to finally be getting used to Earth. Mind you, that might have been around the same time he figured out you were training with him. It made quite an impression on him, you know.”

“It did?” I asked curiously.

“Well, yeah, of course. He was impressed you’d managed to stick it out, but at the same time he was also pretty shocked Bishop managed to get used to you instead of losing his patience and throwing you out of another window despite Alex’ severe threats.”

“He used to lose his patience all the time,” I pointed out. “It’s just that I let him take it out on me and called it training.”

“He doesn’t anymore?” she asked.

“Been a while. I’m not going to claim it won’t happen again at some point, but yeah, it’s gotten noticeably less common.”

“Maybe you’re just magic,” Lenya said, and promptly laughed out loud. “Oh my god, that pun wasn’t even on purpose! I just didn’t think.”

I grinned but also shook my head. “Doubt I can take all that much credit for it. Maybe it had a bit of an effect, I’m not sure, but I’m guessing for the most part it’s just time. I mean, he’s getting over what is essentially a ridiculously huge culture shock, you know? I still don’t think he’d suddenly be a great guy if it wasn’t for that, but it’s _got_ to be a factor in how he acted the first few months.”

“Probably. Can we stop talking about Bishop now and go back to tasering?”

I obliged her with enthusiasm.


	19. Paradox

**Paradox**

_(a seemingly absurd or self-contradictory statement)_

“Again.”

Bishop was utterly merciless. I groaned and obeyed, because I sure as hell had learned _that_ by now, and stepped toward him again.

I was enjoying myself even less than usual. He’d decided to try hand-to-hand combat once more, not even caring that I’d tried to refuse with the help of more than a few colorful curse words. In the end, I knew logically that it could only help, and that Bishop didn’t have ulterior motives, so I’d acquiesced and was now simply trying to ignore how it all made me feel.

Currently he had me try and escape from a grapple that had him attacking me from behind, pinning my arms down with his own and then locking his hands together in front of me, which meant my ribcage was by now bruised halfway to hell. He’d wanted to see if I could actually manage to give myself a burst of magic-enhanced strength to break free, and he had refused to practice anything but this until I managed.

We were on day _three_ of this bullshit.

The only slight positive I could find about the situation was that the dreaded physical contact – his chest pressed to my back – was getting less and less anxiety-inducing. I still didn’t like it overmuch, but that was more from annoyance than fear.

I sighed, allowed him to pin my arms down for the nine hundredth time and unenthusiastically prepared to try again.

And then I felt his lips and breath on the side of my neck, far, _far_ too close, and I freaked out and broke his grip with a jolt of energy that raced through me and made me feel for a single second as though I might actually burst. I spun and backed away as quickly as I could, feeling as though my blood had turned into liquid ice.

_“There_ you go,” he said as though he hadn’t just basically molested me. “Just needed the right incentive.”

“I might _actually_ kill you,” I said. My voice trembled. “I have the right incentive for that, too.”

He fucking smirked like the bastard he was. “Gonna have to practice your spells first.”

“Oh my god, fuck you so much,” I growled, and then there was a staff in my hand and I was sweeping his legs out from under him with a motion that was only as fluent as it was because he’d made me practice it a million times, the utter fucking –

He was up and disarming me just a moment later. I barely managed to keep from lunging at him so I could choke him with my bare hands, and he _still_ seemed to find it fucking amusing.

“Sit,” he said as he directed me toward a wall with the staff like he was herding sheep. Now I wanted to kill him and then _vaporize the body._

“I can’t even express how much I loathe you.” I was beginning to shake uncontrollably.

“I’m not about to apologize. It fucking worked.”

I shot him a look that I very much hoped was absolutely dripping with hatred. “If it hadn’t, you’d actually have said sorry? Bullshit.”

“Hm,” he said, “you’re right, it is. In my defense, it was this or putting my hands on your tits, and I figured you’d forgive that even less.”

“That _so_ does not make it better.”

“Well, either way, nice work summoning that staff from across the room.”

I gave him a wide-eyed stare. “What?”

He nodded over to the corner where the staff rack was. “Didn’t use them today, remember?”

I closed my eyes and allowed the back of my head to collide with the wall. It made a satisfying _thunk._ “What the fuck,” I said.

“Feel free to thank me at any time.”

“You absolute _fuckwaffle.”_

He frowned for a moment and then shrugged. “Close enough.”

*~*

“How have things been going?” Alex asked as he motioned for me to sit down.

I thought for a moment. We hadn’t talked all that much since the big blowup about me basically lying to him about everything, and so I wasn’t entirely sure where we stood. I assumed he wasn’t going to be quite as enthusiastic about being friends again as he had been before.

“It’s been pretty good,” I said eventually, which…sounded like a total cop-out. “I’ve been improving slowly but steadily.”

“Magic or fighting?”

“Both. I actually found something that may help with the whole personal space issue.”

“That’s really good news,” he said, and I appreciated that he seemed to know how big a deal it was for me. “What is it?”

“Charging up my hand with electricity before I try to push someone away. Kind of like a taser.”

“As strong as one?”

“I haven’t actually measured it, and I don’t know how many volts a taser has, but it did blacken the wall when I tried it out. I’m hoping I’ll be able to control the strength of it with practice.”

“Verena,” he said and looked at me gravely, “do you realize how cool that is?”

“Um, yeah, pretty much. Sorry about the wall though.”

He leaned back, looking thoroughly impressed. “I’ll take the repainting cost out of your budget. How’d you get the idea?”

“Bishop.”

Alex’ eyebrows shot up. “Really?”

“Apparently it’s somewhat of a thing in Faerun among the young female mages.”

“Huh.”

“Something wrong?” I asked, because I couldn’t interpret his expression.

“Just a lot of things surprising me lately.” He sighed and reached up to rub his eyes. “I feel like I’m getting old.”

“Alex,” I said, “I can assure you, you still don’t have any gray hairs, which is actually kind of impressive, considering I’ve, you know, given it my all.”

He snorted. “You certainly did that.”

“Seriously though, please don’t dive headfirst into some kind of mid-life crisis. You’re nowhere near old enough for that, and I’m not ready to mother you through it.”

“Thank god for that.”

“Seriously though, I’m curious – what _has_ been surprising you lately apart from, you know…”

“Apart from you turning out to be vastly more of a headache than I expected?”

“Well, yes, apart from me fighting to become someone who’s not scared of her own shadow.”

He sighed. “Let’s see. There’s the fact that Claus is getting married in a couple of weeks and didn’t think he needed to inform me about it any earlier than yesterday. I didn’t think he was quite that much of an idiot. So that was surprising.”

“Claus, as in Claus from Medical?”

“Yes, that one, although I don’t think we have any others, actually.”

“I like Peggy better, anyway. She does great stitches.”

He looked at me consideringly. “You ever talk to Bishop about the scars?”

“Um, no. I’m not an idiot. He may be slightly less evil, but he’s still Bishop.”

“He _has_ been managing to hold on to a Striketeam partner for over five weeks now, which was another thing that surprised me, although I’m inclined to give most of the credit to America. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

“How many attempts were there before her?”

“To give Bishop a permanent partner? Let’s see.” He started ticking off on his fingers. “Poor Caddie was our guinea pig. I thought she could handle it, and I was wrong. Bishop hadn’t even been here for two months and was still fucked up five ways from Sunday, and my concern was always whether she could defend herself physically – she’s the strongest of the women, that’s why Captain Patel and I chose her – but he made her cry for the first time in her entire life, and then the second time, and the third.”

I winced. I was pretty sure I had never even seen Bishop come close to that level of verbally abusive. I didn’t know who Caddie was, but there was no way she’d have deserved that.

“Yes, exactly. Then we tried Leslie, because she’s as tough and bitchy as they come, and we thought it would help. They kept sleeping together, which is not a thing that should have happened at all, not within a Striketeam. It ends up fucking with the dynamic, and that’s how you get killed on a mission. Sean had way too bad a temper, Bishop could rile him up in literally twenty seconds without breaking a sweat. Then Elliot, and you know what happened there – I’m not blaming you, don’t think that for a single second, alright?”

“I know,” I said, and tried to give him a smile, but it didn’t entirely work. I’d had no idea that Bishop had been partnered with him, although I supposed it explained why he’d asked me about it, months ago.

“Then Tamika, who was new at the time, volunteered, and it ended up being the same problem as with Leslie. Patel warned her about it, and she still jumped into bed with Bishop in less than a _week._ After that, we left him unpartnered for a while to give things a chance to cool down – and to allow me to retain my sanity, frankly. And just before America, we tried Darryl, which worked for a little while, and then…I’m actually not sure what happened, neither of them would tell me, but Darryl had three broken fingers and a huge grudge at the end of it and threatened to quit if we didn’t reassign him.”

“Holy shit,” I said. _“Seven_ partners?”

“Lucky number, maybe. Fingers crossed.”

“Not worried about America sleeping with him?”

“No, that’s why we picked her in the first place. Wrong team, long-term relationship. I actually made a deal with her that if she gave it her very best attempt to stay partnered with him, I’d find her girlfriend a job here, so it’d be less stressful on them. Right now, they’re basically long-distance.”

“Yes, well, that’s what happens if you build an institute in the middle of nowhere.”

“Because downtown Chicago would have been _great_ for the level of secrecy we need to maintain.”

“Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Hey,” I said when something occurred to me out of nowhere. “I’ve been meaning to ask – how come you never come to the lab?”

“Yours? I don’t know if you recall, but we were at odds for quite some time, and I figured it wasn’t going to be productive if I invaded your space. And after that, I didn’t think about it, and then I was busy. But if you want me there, I’ll make it a point to visit.”

“I think that would be nice.” I gave him a careful smile. “Just to say hi.”

“Alright, then you can look forward to me just saying hi.”

*~*

Two days later, Lenya didn’t come over for our usual evening date, and when I came over to her room afterwards, she’d been crying.

“Fuck,” I said, somehow managing to hug her, step fully into her room and close the door at the same time. “What happened?”

“Ren and Yui are leaving,” she said.

“Leaving? Where are they going?”

“London,” she said. “Goldcrest asked for help in improving their fighters’ skills and methods, and they volunteered. They’ll be gone before Christmas.”

“How long?”

“A couple of years, at least.”

“Oh, hon.” I squeezed her tightly. “I’m sorry.”

“Probably for the best, you know. Things have been awkward, even though Ren is kind enough to try and pretend nothing happened. And I know Yui feels bad, and that she had good intentions, but I still haven’t been able to forgive her all the way. But it still…you know…”

“Still doesn’t help to make you feel any better about it?”

“Yeah. And I don’t really hang out with anyone else except you, you know, and I promised Alex I would try my best to make a couple more friends, but I’m not looking forward to it. It’s not easy.”

“I know it’s not, hon. Come on,” I said, ushering her towards her bed. “Pick a movie. I’ll break out the chocolate.”

She sniffled and obeyed.

*~*

“Mind if I come in here to punch a wall?”

“Why?” I asked carefully.

“Because I’m angry.”

He was, too. I hadn’t noticed it from the corner of my eye, but now that I was looking at him fully, it was extremely obvious. I hadn’t seen Bishop this tense in a very long time.

“Okay, but why _here?”_ I asked. “Does any old wall just not do it for you?”

“If I do it in here, Alex will think the damage is your fault and not mine.”

“Ah,” I said, and then I thought for a moment and finally sighed. “He’ll just take it out of my budget. Knock yourself out.”

He threw a punch with far more force than I’d expected. Plaster rained down, and for a few seconds, I was completely convinced he had broken his hand. It was bloody, but seemed to be alright, because I couldn’t imagine that otherwise he’d have thrown a second punch. This one made less of a hole but made up for it in the amount of smeared blood on my wall, and it did cause Bishop to hiss with pain and grip the bloodied hand tightly with his other.

“Goes well with the black spot I made with my electricity spell,” I commented, getting up to grab the first aid kit and wet a cloth.

“Does it?” Bishop looked around until he found the spot in question. “Impressive. You still haven’t actually shown me that spell, you know.”

“That’s because I figured I should probably be nice and not risk accidentally killing you. I can’t control the strength of it yet.”

“I didn’t say you had to do it on _me.”_

“Fine. I can show you on the wall later.” I tugged his injured hand toward me and inspected it for any obvious plaster pieces stuck in the wound, then started washing the blood and plaster dust off. I did not bother to be gentle about it. “You’re going to tell me what these fancy new holes in my wall are all about?”

“Striketeam partner,” he ground out.

“Aw. Alex was so happy about how long you’d lasted. Don’t break his heart.”

“Talk to him about me a lot?” he asked acerbically.

“No, actually. Mostly we spend our meetings eating baked goods. It’s very productive. But don’t leave me hanging, what did America do?”

“She’s a cunt.”

“Well that’s terribly specific.”

He pulled his hand out of my grasp before I could even start considering whether to put antibiotic ointment on it. “Her voice is shrill, she insists nothing is her fault, she talks too much instead of fucking concentrating, and despite the fact that she has very little experience – with the sort of creatures we tend to fight and in general – she doesn’t think she needs to listen to anything I tell her, which is going to get both of us killed one of these days.”

Huh. I hadn’t actually expected him to make good points, but that last one certainly was.

“I can kind of see why you’re not too happy with her.”

“That’s putting it mildly.” His eyes flicked to the bloodied wall. “One day, that’ll be her face. Probably a couple of days before her wedding, if I get my timing right.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, I’m not saying ‘do it’, but if you’ve been wanting to punch her for so long, why haven’t you?”

He sighed. “Alex was pretty specific about the things I’m not allowed to do if I want to stay. And, believe it or not, I don’t like the idea of spending the rest of my life in captivity. I’ve done enough of that. So I can’t punch anyone in the face that doesn’t try to attack me first.”

“Sorry to say this, but that seems fairly reasonable.”

“Maybe to you.”

“Did he make that a rule at the same time he told you not to throw people out of windows?”

Bishop made a sound of amusement. “No. ‘No punching people’ came later. He’s adding them one by one as I find new ways to piss people off.”

“That _is_ a singular talent of yours,” I said.

“Yes, it is. Let me see them.”

“What?” I asked, feeling lost.

“The scars. Let me see.”

“Why?”

He gave me a look that dared me to keep arguing. I sighed and turned my back on him, pulling up my shirt. I’d assumed he only wanted a quick look, to…admire his handywork? I wasn’t really sure. But when I let go of my shirt again, he placed his hand on my back to stop it going down.

“Didn’t heal well, did they.”

“No,” I said. “If you recall, they kept breaking open again every morning.”

“Right.” I felt his finger tracing a couple of them and found I didn’t actually mind the touch. It seemed very analytical, somehow, but also…well, I could not imagine the word ‘sorry’ ever crossing his lips in a way that was voluntary, honest and serious, but I got the impression that, for him, this came pretty close to it.

“You’re lucky I’m not vain. Else I’d carry way more of a grudge.” It was the best way I could find to communicate forgiveness, and he seemed to get the message. With a measured exhale, he let go of my shirt.

And with considerable surprise, I realized that I no longer felt bitter and angry about having been thrown through a window.


	20. Catalyst

**Catalyst**

_(a substance that triggers or increases the rate of a chemical reaction)_

“So. I have constructive criticism,” I said as I plopped a slice of chocolate cake on Alex’ desk.

“Oh?”

“You may want to, um…” I paused and tried to find a diplomatic way to word it. “To make sure that the Strikers know it’s generally a good idea to learn from those with more experience.”

Alex stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “What?”

“Keep up, Alex, I’m trying to save you a headache here.”

“Sorry, I’m lost. That’s common sense. The Strikers are not idiots, much as you might like to think so.”

I sighed. “Seriously? America, Alex. You should have a talk with America. She’s ignoring Bishop when he actually tries to teach her shit.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding like his world had just turned upside down. “I didn’t know that.”

“Neither did I, until Bishop punched a hole into my wall yesterday.”

Alex groaned. “Seriously? Do I have to specify ‘no property damage’?”

“Well, the alternative to my wall would have been America’s face, so that might put it a little bit into perspective.”

“That’s…a good point, actually.” He grimaced. “Maybe I’m expecting too much from him, given that I have no idea where his head’s at, at this point.”

“It’s a fine line to tread,” I said sagely.

“Thanks for letting me know. I’ll try and fix it before these two implode.”

“No problem. How are you?”

“Stressed, frustrated, tense, in pain, tired.” He rubbed his eyes, then slumped forward and hid his face in his arms.

“Sounds fun,” I said. “Where can I sign up?”

“Don’t even,” came his muffled retort.

I liked that he let me see him like this, undignified and a little bit vulnerable, and I was glad he _could,_ with me. I knew he felt he had to maintain the stoic four-star general façade with anyone military, but even Alex needed to breathe occasionally.

“Sorry,” I said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About all of my bureaucratic and difficult decision-making woes? Not particularly.”

“The Strikers have a massage guy, don’t they?”

“No. I mean, yes, they do, but I can’t go to him.”

“Why not?”

Alex mumbled something into the desk.

“What?”

“I said, he’s too attractive for me to be able to relax.”

_“Oh,”_ I said, and was glad he couldn’t see me smirking. “We need to find you a boyfriend. Is a girlfriend an option too?”

“Just boyfriend. And no, you are _not_ doing that. I have my hands way too full as it is.”

“But, Alex,” I said. “Domestic bliss is practically a cure-all.”

At least he found that funny, which was good, because apparently, I couldn’t be of any further help to him.

*~*

“You talked to Alex, didn’t you?” Bishop asked at the end of training a few days later, extending his hand for my staff so he could put it on the rack. I obliged.

“Hm?”

“America deferred to me in tactics training yesterday, and she didn’t exactly look like she enjoyed doing it.”

“That’s good,” I said, “but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

His eyes met mine, and then the corner of his mouth twitched. “Sure you don’t.”

“Exactly.”

I grabbed my towel and water and was about to head for the side door that I always used to leave after training, but Bishop apparently had other plans.

“Come on,” he said, and nodded toward the main doors.

“Come on what?”

“Just fucking come on,” he said and gave me a shove that sent me stumbling and almost falling on my face.

“Can you _not?”_ I complained.

It was strange, walking beside him, through the main workout area like I’d only done once before with Ren. I saw Chester there, and he gave me a friendly wave before looking extremely confused. It took me a moment to realize that, right, me training with Bishop still wasn’t actually a thing that all that many people were aware of, since the Strikers rarely paid attention to me, and since no one who _did_ know was likely to gossip about it. Last thing Chester had known, I’d been terrified.

I tried to bridge the awkwardness by waving back cheerily, then dodged Tamika, who swung a jump rope a bit too wildly and didn’t seem to care who was in the way.

We left the workout area and crossed a hallway into a bright, expansive kitchen. I’d never been in this part of the prism before, but I might have decided long before now to endure the awkwardness of being around the Strikers if I’d known they had such a nice kitchen. I wanted to bake in here for _days._

There were several people sitting around a marble-topped kitchen island, eating breakfast. All of them looked unfamiliar, which surprised me until I realized that of course Alex would have found replacements for Ren and Yui.

“Morning,” one girl with long blonde hair and a glowing complexion said cheerfully. “Oh, hey, I haven’t met you, have I? Sorry, the faces are all blurring together.”

I was so unused to Strikers being nice to me that I found her enthusiasm a little overwhelming. “We haven’t met, no,” I said carefully. “Hi. I’m Verena.”

“Jess,” she said and held out her hand to shake. I took it, feeling strange.

“Also Jess,” said the girl next to her, who had a shaved head and four facial piercings. “What’s up.”

One of the guys introduced himself as Rafi just as Bishop apparently became impatient, because he sighed and shoved me toward a stool. I sat obediently.

“So, who’s your partner?” blonde Jess asked.

“Hm? Oh, no, I’m not actually a Striker.” And just so they wouldn’t immediately take me for an imposter, I added, “I just let Bishop beat me up a lot. Sometimes I even learn things in the process.”

“Isn’t that how we all learn?” asked the other Jess with the piercings. “I don’t know about you guys, but that was my training in a nutshell.”

“You’re not wrong,” Rafi chimed in.

Bishop put a bowl in front of me with considerable force. It contained oats, yoghurt, and a spoon.

“Thanks,” I said, baffled. Had he just…made me breakfast? What the fuck was happening?

“You look confused,” pierced Jess noted.

“I am,” I said. “Bishop’s being nice. It’s _weird.”_

They chuckled, which told me that there was no way this bunch had been here for more than a day or two.

“Did nobody warn them?” I asked Bishop as he sat down with his own bowl.

He shrugged, looking supremely unconcerned. “They’ll find out.”

“Warn us about what?” asked the blond guy who was either the rare non-army Striker or who had decided he was done giving a fuck about the rule against beard stubble.

“Well,” I said, “apparently, you’ll find out. I didn’t catch your name, sorry.”

“Dean Sullivan,” he said. “I’m new.”

“Dude,” said pierced Jess, “we’re _all_ new.”

“Oh, right,” he said and looked sheepish.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Dean Sullivan,” I said. “Welcome to Dome.”

He grinned broadly. “Thanks!”

“Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

Bishop said, “Equipment maintenance.”

“Why don’t you have to?”

“Because I don’t give a fuck, and I’m hungry.”

Everyone else at the table stared at him as though he’d grown a second head. Bishop ignored them completely.

“That’s allowed?” asked Dean, who looked like he’d just been struck by lightning.

“Of course not, you dum-dum,” said pierced Jess. “Why would they allow you to slack off? Especially in a place like this.”

“When did you guys get here?” I asked, because I didn’t think discussing the various ways in which Bishop was an exception to the rules would be in any way productive right now.

“Yesterday morning,” said blonde Jess.

“Oh, you _are_ new,” I said. “Just the four of you?”

“There’s three more,” said Rafi. “This guy Lucas, he’s really high-strung, and…I don’t remember the names of the other two.”

“Can’t help you there,” said blonde Jess. “I don’t think the girl in the…what do you call it?” She gestured towards the top of her head.

“Hijab,” said Rafi.

“Yeah, that. I don’t think she said a word at all during the drive, I don’t remember her introducing herself either. And then there’s the French guy, the hot one.”

“Naeem,” said pierced Jess. “You think he’s hot?”

“Well, yeah,” said blonde Jess. “Duh.”

Pierced Jess made a face. Bishop used the moment to get up, toss his bowl in the sink so hard it made me jump, and leave.

“What’s his deal?” blonde Jess asked.

“Um,” I said. “He’s just…Bishop. Has no one actually explained him yet?”

“No,” said pierced Jess. “To be honest, we haven’t been told shit so far. We have this orientation thing in like forty minutes, and I assume that’s when we’ll be told what we’re actually here for.”

I hadn’t expected that at all. “What _do_ you know?”

She shrugged. “I know there’s a lot of classified stuff going on, that there’s a big science lab or something, and that we’re expected to see combat, although I don’t know what kind.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah. To be honest, this place is a lot more chill than I expected it to be, considering this is supposed to be a really elite assignment.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Alex definitely has his own way of doing things.”

She frowned at me. “Who’s Alex?”

“Oh, um.” I looked at her sheepishly. “General Simoni. I’m a civilian, I get to call him Alex.”

“This place _is_ different,” said Rafi. “It’s gonna be interesting when we actually get to leave this part of the institute.”

“You’re not allowed yet?” Something occurred to me. “Oh, that actually makes a lot of sense. I was wondering why he was letting you loose on the place if you don’t even know what goes on here, but I think I’m just the oddity. I assume the other Strikers know how this works. I don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, no one but the Strikers generally comes into the prism. I’m the only exception, and I usually only go to my lab on the top floor or to the training court.” I circled my spoon to indicate the entire kitchen. “I’ve never actually been in this room. So I’ll probably be the only one interacting with you who doesn’t actually have a clue how it works when we get new Strikers.”

“About half of that makes sense to me,” said Dean. “So do you work in the lab or are you training to be a Striker?”

“Part-time lab, part-time training,” I said. “Although Alex doesn’t think I’m good enough to ever be a Striker. I’m trying to prove him wrong.”

I hadn’t realized until this moment that it was true – even though I still didn’t think being a Striker was super desirable, and it was absolutely not a good idea for me, I wanted to just _be good enough_ to do it. I wanted to keep training until the point when Alex would admit he’d been wrong, that I could do it. I wanted to prove the same to Bishop. And to myself. And to the other Strikers, too.

Apparently, people doubting me was another thing that kept me motivated, along with being thrown out of windows and then being angry about it.

“Why haven’t you been here before?” blonde Jess asked. “Are you just always alone in your lab?”

“For the most part,” I said. “I do get visitors occasionally. At this point, I’m honestly not sure if I’m just being paranoid, but when I first moved into this lab from over in the research wing, the Strikers really didn’t like me invading the prism. It was…well, ‘tense’ is putting it mildly.”

“Like, how?” she wanted to know.

I shrugged. “Just…high school drama style, basically. Snide comments and dirty looks and gossipy bullshit. It wasn’t quite bullying, but it also wasn’t pleasant, and I wasn’t about to subject myself to it more than necessary.”

“Ugh, that sucks,” said pierced Jess. “I remember that sort of thing. I feel your pain a hundred percent.” She gave me a half-smile.

“Well, you should come back and hang out,” said Rafi. “I mean, in my book, if you’re training at all, you belong here, you know?”

Great. Now I needed to bake fucking _Bishop_ a cake, too.

*~*

“I think…Lenya, I think we’re _friends,”_ I said halfway through Pride and Prejudice. I found it utterly boring, but Lenya had been wanting to watch it for a while, so here we were.

“Um, yeah,” she said, and gave me a strange look. “We’ve been friends for over two years. What the heck is wrong with you?”

“No, I mean…” I shook my head, because the idea really was bizarre, but I’d been mulling it over, and I couldn’t for the life of me come up with an explanation as to why I’d been dragged into the prism’s kitchen to meet new people that morning. “Me and Bishop. I think, in a really weird way, we’re…friends.”

She stopped paying attention to the movie completely and turned to stare at me with an open mouth. “Verena. He tried to cut your throat and threw you through a window like a bowling ball.”

I sighed. “Why does everyone think I’ve forgotten that? I see the evidence every time I look in the mirror. But this morning, after training, he made me come with him to meet the new Strikers who just came in, because he knew that I’ve still got issues being around most of the others. Like…why? Why would he do that? It was unprompted and…and _thoughtful,_ for fuck’s sake.”

“Is there video evidence?” Lenya asked. “Because I think you might be hallucinating.”

“I know,” I said. “It’s _nuts.”_

“He got into it with one of the commissary guys this afternoon, you know. Shattered his phone, nearly broke his finger, all because the guy made a comment he didn’t like. Alex is pretty mad.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “I really don’t. I mean, he still insults me and gives me way more bruises than necessary, but now there’s suddenly all this _nice_ shit mixed in with it.”

“Well,” she said, tilting her head and putting on what I’d come to know as her ‘analyzing’ face. “He’s probably just really used to you by now. You’ve been training one-on-one with him for…over a year and a half, right? I mean, he obviously spends a lot of time with the other Strikers, but they’ve always got so much drama going on, and he’s always so low on patience, so I doubt he tolerates much of it. From what you’re telling me, the way you two train together is just…um, chill, I guess? You know what I mean. I think maybe he appreciates that sort of interaction.”

“Hm,” I said, and then, noncommittally, “Maybe.”

“You don’t think so?”

“I have no idea what to think.”

“You could ask him?”

“Ha,” I said. “You’re hilarious.”

“Okay, yeah, that was a dumb thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“A bit, yeah.”

She chewed on her lip for a bit, apparently still puzzling. “What happened before he took you there?”

“Training, I told you.”

“Did you talk or anything?”

“Oh! Yes, actually. I did him a favor a few days ago. He said…well, he didn’t actually say thank you, but it was implied.”

_“Implied,”_ Lenya repeated. “Did he try to crack your skull or something like that? Is that how he implies things? It sounds like a thing he’d do.”

I snorted. “So that’s probably why then, isn’t it? He didn’t want to be in my debt.”

“I think so. Maybe you should do him favors more often.”

“You’d think so, but I guarantee he’d get pissy about it really quickly. But…hey.” I gave her a broad smile. “The new guys are actually pretty nice. Maybe we can widen the pathetic remains of our circle of friends.”

“We don’t have a circle of friends anymore,” she said.

“Well, no. But we should try to make a new one.”

*~*

“Thanks for that, yesterday,” I said the next morning, as I picked up the staff Bishop had just made me drop with some bullshit underhand hooking maneuver I’d never seen before.

He looked at me sideways. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“Thought so,” he said.

I couldn’t suppress a faint grin, because yeah, that sounded about right.


	21. Hoarfrost

**Hoarfrost**

_(a grayish-white crystalline deposit of frozen water vapor)_

“Oh my god, he’s _awful,”_ blonde Jess said, and she looked like she meant it too. Her face was blotchy, and her make-up had certainly seen better days. “Why the hell did I sleep with him?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” I supplied mercilessly. “Sorry, but…I did warn you. Repeatedly.”

“I know.” She looked down at the overly shaggy carpet, which was by far the predominant feature of the lounge we were currently hanging out in. It was more private than the kitchen, and I’d figured it was a good place to have girl talk, whatever that might entail. I hadn’t thought it would consist of Jess crying, me rolling my eyes along with pierced Jess, who also didn’t seem impressed, while Lenya and Ayesha – the new Muslim Striker – were being enablers and agreeing that Jess totally hadn’t deserved to be treated that way.

“God, I just…I thought as long as I wasn’t being all clingy, I’d be fine. It’s not like I want a relationship. But the things he said were just – Jesus, how can anyone be that vile?”

“What _did_ he say to you, anyway?” pierced Jess asked.

“I’m not repeating that.” Blonde Jess sniffed. Lenya handed her a fresh Kleenex while I fought the impulse to roll my eyes yet again. This girl had better be some manner of tactical combat genius, because otherwise it was beyond me why Alex had recruited her. I’d given her the benefit of the doubt until now, but I’d arrived at the point where I could feel myself losing my patience.

“He didn’t even…I mean, like, neither of us was even dressed yet, and he –”

“Well, that’s me leaving,” I interrupted, thankful I finally had an excuse. “I’ve got to train with the guy every day, I do _not_ want to picture him naked, thank you very much.”

“He’s not that hot anyway,” Jess muttered sullenly.

“Not what you said two days ago,” the other Jess pointed out.

“Oh my god, why are you always so cold? Something’s wrong with you, seriously.” Blonde Jess crossed her arms and glared. “Besides, I didn’t know then that he’s, like, walking scar tissue.”

I left the room before I said something I’d regret, because what the fuck? How could anyone look at all that evidence of circumstances no one should ever have to live through and then say _that?_ I got that she was furious with him, but still.

“Hey!” I heard pierced Jess calling, and I stopped and waited for her to catch up.

“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t want to be the first to leave and get called a bitch for it again.”

“Yeah,” I said, a bit ruefully. “I saw an excuse and clung to it with all the strength at my disposal.”

She snorted a laugh. “Aren’t you much better off, now that you know he’s not hot?”

“Don’t even get me started on that bullshit she just said.”

She frowned, probably at my vicious tone, and allowed me to lead the way to the stairwell. “You’re…offended she doesn’t think he’s hot?”

“God no,” I said. “I’m offended that she was able to dismiss the evidence of several lifetimes’ worth of violent torture like that. Seriously, I do kinda get why she’s upset, it’s not like the guy’s an angel, but that doesn’t excuse ‘Well he’s clearly been tortured to hell and back, but all I care about is being petty because he was mean to me’.”

“That bad?” she asked as we started on the stairs.

I sighed. I didn’t want to be the one jumping to Bishop’s defense all the time – not that he’d give a fuck either way – but on the other hand, it didn’t even really matter who this was about – I wasn’t okay with it, and if I wanted to speak up, I was going to _speak up._

I stopped on the landing, turned, and reached for my shirt to present the scars on my back. “See this?”

“Yeah,” she said. “What are those from?”

“Was thrown through a window,” I informed her.

“Damn.” She sounded impressed.

I turned back to her and pointed to my throat. “See _this?”_

“Well, yeah,” she said. “I’ve been wondering how you got it. It’s gnarly. Sorry if you’re touchy about it.”

“I’m not,” I assured her, and added, “Angry drunk guy, broken bottle.”

“Damn,” she said again.

“I don’t want you to think I actually believe Bishop’s a good guy deep down or something, because I don’t. He’s an absolute asshole. The point I’m trying to make is…he gave me all of those scars, and I know I’m not anywhere near the only one he’s hurt. And despite all of that, when I saw his bare back for like two seconds, I wanted to _cry.”_

She seemed to process for a moment, looking at me without really seeing me, and eventually she said, “Okay. Yeah. I see your point. That’s got to be pretty fucking horrifying.”

“Yeah,” I said and resumed climbing the stairs.

I hadn’t planned on continuing this particular topic, but she caught up to me and said, “You like him though.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I don’t mean in a romantic way or anything, but you do like him.”

“I’ve gotten used to him. Is that the same thing?”

“Close enough,” she said. “Also, damn girl, he did all that to you and you still train with him like it’s nothing?”

“Long story,” I said. “The window-throwing happened on the first day of training, and after that I was too pissed off to be scared.”

She laughed. “I can see that.”

“If you could not spread all this around, I’d appreciate it,” I told her. “The last thing I want is Bishop getting super offended that I dared to speak up for him and murdering me in a fit of rage.”

“Sure thing,” she said. “Hey, nice place you got here. What do you even research?”

We’d reached my lab. I wasn’t quite sure how to answer her question, because she and the other newbies had barely finished processing the whole ‘other dimension’ bit, and I didn’t think she was quite ready for more. “Hard to explain in a few sentences,” I said.

She looked curious but shook her head when I invited her inside with a gesture. “Got PT in fifteen minutes, and I really don’t want to leave a bad impression my first month, you know?”

“Got it,” I said. “But still, you’re welcome any time, although I’m usually only here in the afternoon.”

“Yeah. I’ll take you up on it,” she said, and I suddenly realized I’d just made a friend.

*~*

“Hey, look,” I said, raising my hand. “I actually altered the rune. I didn’t think I’d manage it, I tried for far too long without seeing any results.”

I pointed my left index finger at the wall near Lenya and swished my right one in the modified rune pattern. A small pinprick of icy blue light built at the tip of my finger and began traveling toward her, and maybe it was only wishful thinking that let me feel the cold radiating out from it, but I was pretty sure I was slowly improving.

“I mean,” I added when the mote of light dimmed and vanished as it reached the halfway point, “it’s fairly useless right now, but I’ll keep working on it.”

“It’s not useless,” Alex disagreed. “It can light up a really tiny room.”

“Oh, screw you,” I said with a laugh. “I’m trying to figure out how to do other elements, but the spell decoding is a super slow process.”

“I know,” he said. “You don’t have to explain yourself, you know, I’m aware your research is difficult and tedious. Considering where you started out two and a half years ago, you’ve already exceeded my expectations ten times over.”

“That’s sweet,” I said. “But I’ll probably still be hard on myself.”

He shrugged. “I can’t really stop you, so be my guest.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

“You made it a sizzly green sphere too, yesterday,” said Lenya.

“Yeah, I think that was some kind of acid. Wasn’t about to touch it and find out.”

“Um,” Alex said, “all’s fair in the name of research and all that, but I’d appreciate if you could refrain from letting acid eat through the floor tiles.”

I produced a put-upon sigh. “If I must.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, he can just take it out of your budget,” Lenya informed me with an impish grin.

Alex gave her a look that was probably supposed to be reprimanding, but the fondness in his eyes spoiled the effect. “You were _not_ supposed to let her know about that.”

“I didn’t!” she protested.

“Let me know about what?” I asked.

“See, Verena has no idea what I’m talking about.”

“Nothing,” Alex said with emphasis.

“Yes,” Lenya agreed, looking so pointedly innocent that it was obvious she was anything but. “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. I’m just saying, since he’s already taking money out of your budget for fixing the wall, you might as well add the cost of replacing a few tiles, you know.”

“Lenya,” Alex said warningly. He seemed to be trying to scowl, but the corner of his mouth kept twitching.

I looked from him to Lenya and back, not getting it. “Right, okay. So…you’re saying I shouldn’t worry about how much property destruction I cause until I have no budget left? And then I’ll just…what, construct whatever new instruments I might need in the future out of paperclips and spit?”

“Well, no,” she said. “But the floor tile replacement could probably be covered by that mysterious and unexpected budget increase for your lab someone seems to have authorized.”

Alex groaned and scrubbed his face with his palm. “Stop _encouraging her.”_

“But she has a right to know what’s happening with her budget,” Lenya said. “So she can make smart, informed decisions.”

“She clearly lost the ability to make smart decisions a long time ago.”

“And besides, I didn’t tell her who authorized it, just that _someone_ did. Anything more would be abusing my position as your aide, and I would never do such a thing.”

I fought not to let my mouth drop open. “How…much of an increase?”

“Oh, you know, it seems to be just around what fixing a couple of walls might cost.”

“You are in so much trouble, young lady,” Alex growled as I tried to process that he’d apparently decided to sneakily undo the budget-cutting he’d announced.

Lenya’s grin widened. “Yes, dad. Sorry, dad.”

Alex tried again to scowl, and it still wasn’t convincing. “Don’t sass me.”

I was so very happy to see she could still smile so easily – and Alex and I seemed in agreement that his sanity was a small price to pay.

*~*

“Would you like to get tasered?” I asked Bishop.

He gave me a blank look. “That sounds like a weird sex thing.”

“Your mind must be such an interesting place,” I said and raised my hand, sending electricity to it until it arced between my fingers. It did nothing more than make my skin prickle, and it looked insanely cool, so I’d been doing it as often as possible as I practiced the spell.

“I take it you can control the strength of it now?” he asked after watching the arcs dance up and down for a moment. “Or did I just really piss you off somehow?”

“Well,” I said, “I had to listen to Jess cry for like half an hour, so fuck you for that, but it’s not quite enough to justify putting myself through the inconvenience of finding a new instructor. No, I’ve got it pretty much mastered. I think.”

“Then sure,” he said and looked at me expectantly.

I slapped my hand on his chest without ceremony, and next thing I knew, he’d been thrown backward nearly eight feet with a sound like thunderclap.

“Oh,” I said, wincing. “Sorry, that was more than I thought.”

He exhaled a long, slow breath, touched his hand to his chest, then looked up from where he’d stumbled to the floor and stared at me. “Impressive,” he said, and sounded like he meant it. “Really impressive.”

I sat awkwardly on the bench next to my water bottle, not quite sure what to say to that. “Um, thanks?”

He took another careful breath and tensed his muscles, coming back to his feet like a human-panther hybrid. He walked over to grab his own water bottle and then dropped back down on the floor near the bench, looking up at me. “Now then,” he said. “Who the fuck is Jess?”

I wasn’t even surprised. “New girl, pretty, blonde, bit naïve.”

“Oh, the flat-chested one.”

“Sure?” I said. “I don’t know, I didn’t pay all that much attention to how curvy she was.”

“Shit priorities you’ve got there,” he said.

“Sorry, I was preoccupied trying to stay sane while she whined about how you were mean to her. It was not how I wanted to spend yesterday, so fuck you very much.”

He laughed out loud. _“Mean?”_

“Well, she phrased it a tad more harshly, but yeah, basically. What _did_ you say to her?”

“That she wasn’t good enough at sucking cock to be able to keep her boyfriend after she’d just cheated on him.”

I really wanted to be able to tell him how fucked up that was, but maybe I just really didn’t like blonde Jess for some reason and hadn’t realized it until now, or maybe he was just the worst influence on me, but whatever it was –

I burst out laughing. “Oh, that _is_ mean.”

He shrugged, and even though he was half turned away from me, I could tell he was smirking. “Few other things, but that was the one that made her try to slap me.”

“How’d that work out for her?”

“Really well,” he said. “I put her in a choke hold and spanked her. And not in the fun way.”

That…was actually really disturbing. And I couldn’t stop giggling. What the fuck was wrong with me?

“That’s callous and cold-blooded,” I informed him.

He raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“Just wanted to say it for the record.”

He looked at the ceiling for a few seconds, as though thinking about something. Then he asked, “A guy ever insult the hells out of you after he fucked you?”

“Um,” I said. “Yeah, once. Remember that ‘frigid slut’ bit?”

“Ah,” he said. “Nonsensical insult guy. You took it that hard?”

“I was fifteen and it was the first time I’d ever even had sex. I found it…not ideal.”

He made a noise of amusement but then said, “That makes a bit more sense.”

“Was your first time any better?”

His face was blank for a moment. Then he took a sip of water and said, “You don’t want to know.”

I wisely didn’t push for more.

“How many of the Strikers have you actually slept with?” I asked instead.

“Eight or nine. Some of them more than once. Others too, of course.”

“And _I_ get called a slut,” I grumbled.

“Feel free to call me a slut if it makes you feel better,” he said.

“Slut.”

“Feel better?”

“No.”

“Well that’s your own problem.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” I said. “But don’t worry, the guy got what was coming to him for saying it.”

“Oh?”

“My mom slapped him.”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh, that’s _good._ Think I like her.”

It occurred to me at that point that eight o’clock had come and gone and we were still sitting here, just talking, as though that was a thing we did.

Well, apparently it was now.


	22. Melting Point

**Melting Point**

_(the temperature at which a substance changes state from solid to liquid)_

“She’s set her sights on Naeem now,” Jess reported. “So the trauma can’t have been too debilitating.”

“Clearly.” I clicked my pen, wrote a note on one of the new rune printouts I was slowly working my way through, and then frowned. “Wait, who’s Naeem?”

“The French guy. Well, French-Algerian, I think. Naeem Duplantier. He seems cool, but he’s also really reserved. I’m not sure what to make of him.”

“You think he’ll go for it?”

Jess shrugged. “Hell if I know. Holy shit, this couch might just be the most comfortable thing in existence.”

I watched with a grin as she stretched luxuriously. “I know,” I said. “I sleep on it sometimes when I’m working late.”

“Don’t blame you. You still haven’t told me what you actually _do_ here, you know.”

“Magic,” I said, and predictably, she thought I was joking.

“Seriously, what is it?”

“I am serious,” I said. “No one told you Faerun has magic, I gather?”

“You are absolutely fucking with me.”

“Nope,” I said and called electricity into my hand, because it was still the coolest thing ever and I couldn’t resist showing off. “See?”

“Holy. Fuck,” she said slowly and carefully. Her gaze was fixed on the flickering arcs traveling merrily up and down between my fingers. “Like…what?”

“Nice, isn’t it? Took me over two years to get to the point where I can do this.”

“It’s _ridiculous,”_ she said. “Does it do anything or just look cool? Like, can you actually shock people?”

“It’s basically a taser – or I suppose technically more of a stun gun, cause so far I can only do it at close range. I tried it on Bishop and he flew back eight feet, and that was only at medium strength.”

“That’s so cool,” she said. “That is _so massively_ cool.”

I grinned. “That’s almost exactly what Alex said.”

She laughed. “He is _so_ not what I expected. I mean, he’s still got the army discipline going on, but I’ve never had a superior officer with that much chill. I didn’t think a general would be _capable_ of that much chill.”

“He’s pretty unique,” I agreed. “The first time I met him, he broke into my house, introduced himself as just ‘Alex’, threatened to take a blood sample by force, and then he came back like two months later and recruited me for Dome. And then, after I got here, I found out he was a four-star general. It was kind of a trip.”

“That’s hilarious,” she said. “Yeah, I think I’ll like it here.”

“Good,” I said. “I need someone to hang out with. Lenya’s been spending so much time with Ayesha and the other Jess, which is not a bad thing, she’s been a bit lonely with just me for company and it’s good for her to have a few more friends again, but as a group, these three just…they talk about topics I’m not interested in. You know what I mean?”

“A hundred percent. I couldn’t care less which of the dudes are hot, I don’t wear makeup, I don’t have any hair to color or highlight or whatever they were wanting to do with theirs the other day, I’m just not a girly girl. Nothing wrong with it, but that’s not me. I’ll talk piercings with you instead if you’re game – I’m _ecstatic_ I can wear mine here.”

“Oh, right, I suppose the army doesn’t usually allow for those while you’re on duty,” I said.

“Definitely not. One small stud earring or some shit is allowed for women, and, I mean…why would you even bother?”

I laughed. “Can you wear them when you actually go out and face combat?”

“Yeah, that’s why none of them are rings, just studs,” she said.

“I don’t have any,” I said. “Wouldn’t mind getting one though. Maybe I should.”

“Do you know where you’d want it?”

I considered it for a long moment. “I’m not super big on anything in the face, I think, except maybe tongue, and that seems terrifying. Bellybutton’s cute, but I feel like…I don’t know, women like Jess seem the type to go for that.”

“She’s got one.”

“Ugh. Yeah, no.” I frowned. “Why am I so disgusted by her all of a sudden?”

“Because you, like me, have got very little patience for idiocy, and she’s _really_ big on that.”

“Truer words,” I said. “You know what? She needs a nickname – maybe not one I’ll share with her, but I can’t keep calling you both Jess in my head, and I can’t be bothered to keep clarifying when I mention one of you to anyone.”

“I’ve been calling her Dollface in my head; she’s got that barbie doll thing going. Not super original, but I can’t be bothered to think all that hard about it, frankly.”

I shrugged. “Dollface it is.”

Jess dug a pack of gum out of her pocket and offered me a stick. When I shook my head, she took it for herself. “So,” she said as she put the pack back into her pocket, “not sure if you know much of anything about this, but how are they on LGBT discrimination in this place? I’ve had too many bullshit experiences.”

“I haven’t noticed anything either way, to be honest, but –” I bit my tongue just in time to keep from thoughtlessly outing Alex by accident. I didn’t think it was a secret so much as him wanting to keep private matters private, but it amounted to the same thing as far as me telling people was concerned. Eventually I settled for, “At least one of the higher-ups is gay, as far as I know,” because I really didn’t want Jess constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, either.

She lit up like a Christmas tree. “Oh my god, I get actual representation? Fuck yes!”

It was the most excited I’d seen her about anything thus far, and I was glad, but it was also depressing to think that she had to have suffered quite a few instances of discrimination and harassment before coming to Dome.

“Pretty hit and miss how supportive the environment is in different places?” I asked.

“Very. It always sucks, being shipped someplace new, ‘cause you just don’t know until a while after you get there. There isn’t really a good way of asking about it either.”

I nodded. “Do you mind me asking about your, um, orientation?”

“Lesbian,” she said. “But thanks for not just assuming. What’s yours?”

“I think I’m pretty straight,” I said. “I haven’t honestly got much experience with guys either though, I’m just not that interested in any of it.”

“Romance or sex?” she asked.

“Either. Both.”

“Bad experiences, or just because?”

“Mostly just because, I think, although to be fair, almost all of my experiences so far have been some degree of bad. Maybe I’ll change my mind one day, maybe not. I’m honestly not too worried about it.”

“Good attitude,” she said.

“What about you?”

“I knew pretty early on that girls were my thing, but I didn’t do anything about it until after high school – should be pretty obvious why.”

I nodded.

“Then I slept my way around town, calmed down a little after a few years of that, had a couple of girlfriends.” She shrugged. “No one lately. And it sucks hooking up on active duty because you can’t do shit to get away from the drama that’s probably gonna come your way.”

“Gee, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said drily. “Never noticed. Funny how that works.”

She snorted. “I still want to know what he said to her. It can’t have been _that_ bad.”

“It really wasn’t,” I said. “But apparently she’s got a boyfriend stashed away somewhere, and Bishop gave her a not-so-gentle reminder that being a cheater isn’t a great quality to have.”

_“After_ they had sex?”

“He’s thoughtful like that.”

She snorted again, then looked at the clock above my desk and jumped to her feet. “Well, fuck. I’m gonna be late for training if I don’t sprint down there right now. Why does that keep happening?”

I nodded. “Because I’m just that captivating. Get sprinting then. Have fun, play nice, come visit again soon!”

She saluted and then was out the door like a shot.

*~*

I still needed a rune to charge up my hand for the taser spell, which meant that – although I could trace it quite fast by now – the spell wasn’t yet as practical as I wanted it to be for keeping people away. I kept working on it, but Bishop also demanded that I practice enhancing my combat skills with the strange split-second effects I seemed to be able to call up instinctively on occasion.

“Do I need to lick your neck again?” he asked one day, after having subdued me five million times in a row without even breaking a sweat. He’d been sent out on a mission the night before that had left his hands swollen and red and raw-looking, and despite the fact that he had trouble closing his fingers, I couldn’t gain any sort of advantage.

“Would you like to die a really violent death?” I shot back.

“Always figured I was going to, anyway.” He shrugged. “Focus. Your head’s been elsewhere all morning.”

He wasn’t wrong. I hadn’t slept well at all. One of the new Strikers – Lucas – had tried to flirt with me the evening before, and it had been harmless, but I’d still panicked, because the last one who’d done that had been Elliot.

“Sorry,” I said. “Just dealing with something.”

“How in the hells have you not learned to leave that at the door when you come here every morning?” he asked.

I didn’t really have the energy to justify myself to him, so I just shrugged. “Can I please have one off-day every once in a while?”

“No.”

“Well then fuck you.”

The last forty-five minutes of training weren’t ideal, and we were both in a bad mood as we left. I skipped visiting the Striker kitchen – I ate breakfast there about half the time these days – and went straight up to my lab, where I charged up my hand and slapped it on the wall until it was decorated with a line of twelve increasingly large black spots.

I fucking hated what Elliot was still doing to my head, I _hated_ it, and I couldn’t stop myself from getting angry at the world in general and myself in particular. I knew it wasn’t healthy. I knew I should have fought it. Property damage seemed a much easier, if temporary, solution, and I thought that maybe I understood a little bit better now why Bishop punched walls.

But it wasn’t just me. The institute in general seemed to be having a bad day. A brawl broke out at lunch, one of the new Strikers – Naeem – broke his arm trying to climb up a fire escape for some stupid reason, another – Dean, the slightly dopey one – ignored the fact that he had food poisoning just long enough to vomit all over the Striker kitchen, and in the middle of supper at the mess hall, one of the cooks had to be rushed to the hospital because she’d gotten boiling water poured over her left arm and shoulder. Her harrowing screams rang in my ears long afterward, and in the end I made the decision to skip going to Lenya’s room – Ayesha and Dollface would probably be there anyway – and instead sit on the floor next to my bed, stare at the wall and hate everything.

There was a knock on my door. I groaned. “Go away.”

“Don’t think I will,” said a voice that very much sounded like Bishop’s, but that was unlikely, because I didn’t think he even knew where my room was, and –

“Either you let me in, or I’ll sit right out here and shout at you through the door until you do.”

“I fucking hate you,” I said, but I did get up and unlocked the door, not bothering to actually open it.

“Knew you had some sense in you,” Bishop said as he stepped inside. He was holding a bottle – fucking hell – but still seemed sober. I supposed the night was still young. Or something.

“What do you want?” I asked, leaning against the wall with my arms crossed.

Bishop ignored me. Instead, he made his way into my bathroom, returned with my toothbrush cup, and poured whiskey into it.

“Drink,” he said, and handed it to me.

“What the _fuck?”_

“We’re getting drunk,” he said. “Keep up.”

“No,” I said. “Really, _no.”_

“Don’t recall giving you a choice,” he said as he placed the bottle on my nightstand and sat on the edge of my bed.

“What, you’re going to pour it forcibly down my throat?”

He tilted his head and gave me that unnerving, intense wolf-eye stare. “Did I give you the impression that’s something I wouldn’t do?”

_Fuck my life._

“Okay, point,” I said. “I still don’t understand why.”

“I’ll tell you later. Now fucking drink, or you’ll find out just how good I am at holding you down and giving you a choice between drinking and suffocating.”

“Just when I started to think that maybe you’re not completely reprehensible,” I said, and drank.

“All of it.”

I did, and when I was done, he got up and poured me more.

“You’re kidding, right? If I force that down too, it’s coming right back up.”

“You’re allowed to sip it now,” he said.

“How very generous of you.”

For several minutes, we were silent. I tried to sip only just often enough so that he wouldn’t feel the need to take action, all while ignoring the horrid taste of the whiskey, and he drank straight from the bottle and stared at the wall.

“Well this is fun,” I eventually broke the silence. “We should do it more often.”

He made a sound of amusement. “I’m waiting until you’re drunk enough so that you’ll actually talk.”

“What the hell do you want me to talk about?”

“Whatever the fuck is bothering you that you won’t talk about sober.”

“Oh my god,” I said. “Is this, like…drunk therapy?”

“If you like.”

“No,” I told him emphatically. “No, I really, really _don’t_ like.”

“Fine, then don’t talk.” He set the bottle down and dropped backwards onto my bed with a sigh. “Nice room you got here.”

“Fuck you.”

He snorted. “Sounds about right.”

I led the toothbrush cup to my mouth again but paused when it touched my lips. “So why are _you_ getting drunk right now?”

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Because your mommy didn’t love you?” I blurted out, and then wanted to slap myself so he wouldn’t have to go through the trouble of doing it. To my relief though, he just laughed.

“That’s probably part of the reason, somewhere. Don’t remember her much though, so maybe not.”

I froze. He’d never, not once, mentioned anything about the parts of his life I’d only read about – maybe the one drunken comment just before the throat-cutting incident could be counted, but I didn’t, because I hadn’t even known him then. As far as I knew, he had no clue I knew anything about that life, so this was…well, unexpected to say the least.

I looked down and felt the silence slowly getting heavier.

“I’ve got more feathers for you,” I blurted out in an attempt to prevent complete awkwardness. “The Canadian goose ones.”

He rolled his head to the side just enough to be able to look at me. “Secondaries?” he asked.

“Both primaries and secondaries, I think. Are those going to work better than pheasant ones, then?”

“I haven’t looked at them yet, have I?” He straightened again, sounding annoyed. “Problem I have is that I can’t exactly shoot the fucking arrows out the window to test, so all I have to go on is how it feels, working with them. It’s not ideal.”

“I found out that turkey feathers are used a lot, over here,” I offered. “I can get a sample of those.”

“Do that.”

“’Kay.”

I looked down at my cup, shuddered, reluctantly took another sip. I had learned by now that making a bow was a test of patience because the wood had to be shaped so very slowly. Since he’d obviously need a hell of a lot of arrows as well, Bishop spent a lot of the wait time making them. It was actually pretty fascinating to learn about – not that I would admit as much to him.

“So,” he said after a long silence. “Talk.”

I sighed. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?”

“Not a chance.”

“I really fucking hate you.”

“Strange,” he told the ceiling. “I get that a lot. Not sure why.”

I huffed out a breath. “Fine. I had massive nightmares, just because some guy hit on me last night and Elliot’s still in my head enough that I can’t seem to cope with even an insignificant little thing like that.”

Bishop was silent for a good ten seconds or so. Then he said, “It’s always nice to hear that other people’s heads are fucked up too.”

“Not as much as yours, but yeah,” I said and took a sip of whiskey.

“How’d you stop him?” he asked.

I blinked. “Elliot?”

“Anyone else try to rape you lately?”

I stared deeply into my cup and watched the ripples on the liquid as my breaths agitated it. “God,” I said. “You’re such a bastard.”

“Don’t think so, actually,” he said. “My parents were properly married. Unless I made that up at some point and started believing it. How did you stop him?”

I sighed. “I didn’t. Lenya hit him over the head with a bottle.”

“Wouldn’t have thought she had it in her,” he mused.

“Yes, well,” I said, “thank god she did.”

He pulled himself back into a sitting position and took another drink from the bottle, then asked, “Why do you all say that over here?”

I frowned. “Say what?”

“Thought you didn’t have gods over here, but you sure thank them a whole fucking lot.”

I thought about that for a moment. “It just carried over into common usage, as a way to express you’re profoundly grateful for something.”

“Carried over from what, though?” he asked. He was thoughtfully moving the bottle in a circle and watching the dark liquid swirling within. “They don’t ever seem to show themselves to any of you, they don’t grant you boons or spells – there’s no sign at all that they actually exist.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t think they do. I’m too science-y. But…a lot of people here – most, maybe – do think they exist. I think some people start believing they do just to cope. Some don’t like the idea of life being random and pointless, and they can’t accept that it is, so they create a reality for themselves in which that’s not the case. I think many people encourage it in others because they find it convenient as a tool to manipulate them. I’m sure there’s a billion more reasons.”

“People here lie a lot, then,” Bishop said thoughtfully. “To others as well as to themselves.”

“Don’t tell me that’s in any way news to you.”

“Nah, it’s human nature,” he said. “No matter where you’re at. Sometimes though, I assume that certain things are the same here as they are in Faerun, and it turns out I’m wrong. Figured I’d ask.”

“Hm,” I said. “Makes sense.”

We were silent for another couple of minutes. I thought about what he’d said and resolved to ask him about Faerun gods in more detail at some point. It didn’t seem to be the right time for it now, though.

“It was another thing I said to piss off the blonde girl,” he told me eventually.

“I call her Dollface now. The other Jess made that up. It’s kind of stupid, but I couldn’t be bothered to come up with something better.”

He looked up at me. “There’s two of those?”

“Yeah. The other one’s the one with the shorn head and piercings in the face.”

“Ah,” he said. “Her. She seems to be slightly more tolerable, from what I’ve seen.”

“I like her. So, what did you say to Dollface?”

“That she was great at deluding herself, that her looks were all she’s got going for her – frankly, they are – and that she was using her bullshit beliefs as a crutch so she wouldn’t have to face the fact that she’s mortal and that eventually she’d be rotting in the ground.” He made a sound of amusement. “And that the worms wouldn’t care how pretty her face was when they ate their way through it. Think she was nearly sick from that.”

“Well, yeah, because that’s…really gross. And it’s not an easy truth – I’ve struggled with it – but I do agree that she seems to lack any and all substance. It’s just one of many reasons she annoys the hell out of me.”

“Knew I liked you for a reason,” he said.

“You don’t like me,” I pointed out.

“Starting to.” He squinted at the bottle. “Might have drank that too fast. Sound like it, anyway.”

I chuckled at that.

He shrugged and took a long pull, as though to demonstrate that he was past caring what effect the alcohol might be having on him. I took another polite sip so I could pretend to keep up. I was starting to feel warm and fuzzy.

“Finish that,” he ordered me.

“Please don’t make me.”

“Finish it,” he said, and I knew better than to keep arguing when he had that tone. With a sigh, I held out the cup for my mandatory refill. He screwed the bottle shut when he’d finished pouring and set it back on the nightstand, and then he lay down on the bed again with a huge sigh. “Wonder where it comes from originally,” he said thoughtfully. “That idea about gods. Faerun’s pretty simple that way, they show themselves and meddle with shit all the time, but here…there’s no reason it should be so similar when you don’t even have proof of the concept, of any part of it.”

I was about to say something I would probably _really_ regret.

“Probably from you guys. The Veil is one-way porous, you know.”

“What the _fuck,”_ he said very slowly, “does that mean?”

“It means that people aren’t the only thing we get from over there. Events and such filter through as thoughts and dreams. Certain people have a knack for receiving them, apparently.”

“Huh,” he said. “Shouldn’t be news to me, I suppose, but it is.”

“Don’t think the Strikers know much of anything about that. I was told when I was still over in the research wing.”

There was yet another long silence. I supposed I couldn’t blame him for processing.

“What kinds of events?” he asked then.

“I can’t give you a full list, I never spent much time learning about it, but – important happenings, things that end up affecting all of Faerun. Concepts, like the idea of elves and dwarves and even magic. Language. Certain people’s life stories, or parts of them, or just, like, adventures they went on, although don’t ask me why some of them get through the Veil and not others. Stuff like that. Some of it is collected here and documented. It’s one of very few ways the institute can learn about Faerun, I think that’s how they justify it.”

“And we can’t control it, can we? What you know about any of us.”

“Alex is actually going to kill me,” I said thoughtfully and drank my whiskey. “But frankly, I refuse to lie to you about this. You deserve to know; it’s a horrible invasion of privacy at the very least. No, I don’t think you can control any of it.”

The silence was loaded this time, heavy, tense. I knew what he would ask before he did it, and I wondered if I had subconsciously led him to this point because I felt guilty knowing what I did about him.

“Is there anything about my life?”

I bit my lip, because – shit. I was actually going to do this, and I had no idea if it was right or wrong. Maybe all I was doing was soothing my own conscience.

“Yes,” I said.

He was silent again, and I wondered whether he hadn’t heard me say it, but then he exploded into movement all at once, and I saw him grab the whiskey bottle and I wanted to scream because this was so, so horribly familiar. I curled up into a ball as the bottle shattered somewhere on the wall, as I was showered with alcohol and glass shards, as I shook and shook and shook and couldn’t seem to stop. I heard him gasping for breath, but he didn’t seem to be able to manage it because he did it again, and again, and through it all I just kept shaking as my heartbeat rang loudly in my ears and I wanted to crawl into a dark, quiet corner and stay there for the rest of my life so I wouldn’t be held down and have my throat cut all the way through this time.

It felt like I was sitting there for days, hyperventilating and alone with my terror.

There was a low sound near me, a touch on my shoulder, but despite me knowing it was coming, my body still jerked violently and then went back to shaking.

“Verena,” Bishop said, and I faintly wondered if I’d ever heard him say my name before. I didn’t think I had.

“Not going to hurt you,” he said.

_Not going to rape you._

“Go away,” I choked out, _“go away.”_

“Can’t.”

I waited, but he waited too, and there we were, each trying to out-wait the other.

“Can you for once in your fucking life be a decent person and do it anyway?”

“No.” He sounded almost rueful. “I scared you.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“What does that mean?”

My voice started shaking, catching up with the rest of me. “I am _so_ not going to explain that right now.”

“I wouldn’t hurt you,” he said. “Well…I beat the hells out of you during training, obviously, but not like this.”

“Go away,” I all but begged.

“Still a no to that.”

I was rocking back and forth now. He made no move to stop me, but he also didn’t take his damn hand off my shoulder, which made the motion difficult and uneven.

“Why do you get to be the one who panics when I just found out you know my whole fucking life story?” he asked.

“Not details,” I said.

“So, you _have_ seen it. Read it. Whatever.”

There was no sense in lying. Even if there had been, I still didn’t feel I could do it. “Back when I was still terrified of you. You hurt me, and Alex wanted me to understand why he still let you stay, why he’d do that to me. Why you deserved a chance.”

“Fuck’s sake,” he said.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

“Could have fooled me,” I said.

“Look at me.”

There was no way in hell I was doing that. I huffed a disbelieving laugh and kept rocking.

“Please,” he said.

I stilled, because that was…that was…

“Did you just –”

_“Don’t.”_

Right. That oddity would have to stay unacknowledged then, which was fine with me. I raised my head and looked straight at him, and while his eyes would always be unnerving, there was a strange kind of honesty there, almost something like vulnerability. It looked out of place. Suddenly, I was at a loss.

“I’m not mad at you,” he said again. It was, quite obviously, the truth. No one was that good a liar, not even him.

I swallowed hard. “Okay.”

He broke eye contact then and looked around the room as though searching for something. Finally, he sighed. “I’m going to lift you up now.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to get you over to the bed. There’s glass all around you.”

I didn’t help, but I didn’t struggle either when he put one arm beneath my knees and the other around my back and lifted me like I didn’t weigh shit. I was deposited on my bed a moment later, and he stepped back. Glass crunched beneath his shoes.

“Alex didn’t want me to tell you,” I said, clutching my blanket like a lifeline. “Obviously. So if you could keep from taking his head off for my sake, I would appreciate that.”

Instead of agreeing or refusing, he asked, “Why _did_ you tell me?”

“Wasn’t fair to keep it from you.”

“Who else knows?”

“No idea. I think it might be just Alex. And to be honest, I don’t think he was _trying_ to invade your privacy, he just needed some kind of information to understand what he was dealing with, whether he was putting the rest of us at risk, long-term, or whether there was a chance you might adapt.”

“Why do I even fucking like you?” Bishop asked. “Stop being so disgustingly _reasonable._ It’s so much easier to be furious than…than whatever the fuck it is I am now.”

“Get over it. The rest of us have to do it too.”

“Good to hear,” he said drily. “Do you want me to leave now?”

“Yes,” I said. “Sorry, I just…I haven’t been terrified of you in a long time.”

“I know,” he said.

“It _sucks.”_

“I know.”

I sighed. I still hadn’t stopped shaking. “I really hate you sometimes.” I actually felt guilty, saying it.

“I know.”

*~*

When I stepped into the training court the next morning, the night before felt like a faraway dream. It hadn’t been, I knew that. I didn’t need the shards on my floor to play evidence.

Bishop looked at me, looked away, and asked gruffly, “You alright?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, gripping my staff tightly.

He nodded, as though to himself. “Makes sense.”

“I’m fine, you asshole,” I said, and then we sparred, and suddenly I was managing to create tiny bursts of speed to gain ground and keep him on his toes, and it felt…

Normal. Oddly calm. Familiar.

Right.


	23. White-Out

**White-Out**

_(loss of color vision as a prelude to losing consciousness)_

I didn’t tell anyone about what had happened, not Lenya, not Alex, not Jess. I did think about it a lot, wondering whether it had truly been the right choice to tell Bishop as much as I had, pondering the fact that he hadn’t reacted as violently as I’d thought him capable of. He was changing, right before my eyes. It made sense, in a way – he’d had two and a half years to get used to life at the institute, and with it, to the fact that no one here was out to murder or torture him, that we were just people living our lives, nothing more and nothing less.

It had also occurred to me that Lenya had probably been onto something when she’d speculated that I was one of very few people he could stand to be around for more than an hour at a time without wanting to punch them. It was entirely possible he knew to appreciate that enough to make an honest effort at not scaring me away, which was in turn something that _I_ knew to appreciate.

My fighting continued to improve, and so did my magic. I worked hard on combining them, stubbornly kept trying to figure out something that worked for me, and at some point, it clicked. I progressed a shocking amount in the space of just over two months.

“You know what you should do?” Bishop asked me one day as we walked together to the kitchen after training.

“A lot of things, but I’m guessing you’re referring to something specific.”

“I am,” he said. “You should ask Alex again if you can have a sword.”

I stopped dead and turned to him. “What in hell makes you think his answer would have changed one bit?”

“Tell him to come and watch you train.”

“I’ll see how our next talk goes, first,” I told him. “But yeah, okay. You really think I’d impress him at this point?”

“You just might,” Bishop said simply. He still wasn’t one for compliments and positive remarks, so on the rare occasion he gave me one, I took it at face value, as an honest evaluation of my ability. It felt great to hear this one in particular.

A tri-tone bell rang at that moment – I knew it could be heard everywhere in the institute, but it felt particularly loud in the hallway we were crossing – and Bishop rolled his eyes. “So much for breakfast.”

“You skip it half the time, anyway.”

“Doesn’t mean I like not having a choice in the matter,” he said and turned toward the equipment room. “I’ll see you tomorrow if I’m not dead in a ditch, I suppose.”

“Yeah, try not to do that.”

I didn’t feel like eating in an empty kitchen, so I grabbed an energy bar and made my way to my lab instead, hoping I’d be able to stay busy and avoid worrying. I profusely disliked that bell– it meant all of the Strikers were urgently needed, and that, in turn, usually meant danger way above average. I’d never exactly enjoyed the thought of the Strikers in danger, but now that I’d made friends with some of them, I felt utterly ill at ease.

“Thought I’d find you here,” Lenya said a quarter of an hour later, sticking her head in the door. “Mind if I come in?”

I swiveled my chair toward her. “You’ve never asked before.”

“Yeah, I know.” She looked down. “I just feel like, lately…”

“We haven’t talked much.” I nodded. I’d been sad about it too, but I’d kept prioritizing training, which I probably shouldn’t have done to quite such an extreme degree. “I’m sorry about that.” I waved her in.

“Me too,” she said, crossing the room and flopping onto the couch with all the elegance of a walrus.

“I suppose…” I tried to find a way to phrase it that made it clear I didn’t consider her at fault. “I knew you’ve been enjoying having friends who actually like watching chick flicks, and who like talking about all those more girly things that I don’t care about, you know. I wanted to give you time to enjoy that, but I think I lost sight of how little time we ended up spending together as a result. Training has been going amazingly well, and I’ve been too focused on it to the detriment of everything else.”

Head still lowered, she nodded. She seemed to consider that statement for a moment and then looked up at me through the curtain of her hair. She had highlights in it now, I realized. “Okay. I did notice that your training has become a lot more important to you lately; I tried to respect that. I’m glad it really is going well.”

“Thank you.” I sighed. “I was going to say I noticed you haven’t stopped by nearly as much as you used to, but I just realized – it’s because Bishop’s here sometimes now, isn’t it?”

“Mh. Well, yeah. Pretty much.” She drew her shoulders together like she was cold, and I felt guilty that even just the thought of it made her so very uncomfortable.

“Hon, I’m sorry,” I said miserably.

Then she raised her head, set her jaw, and looked straight at me. “Are you in love with him?”

The question hung in the air for a moment as I tried to process _that._

“Lenya,” I said then. “What the fuck.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to think?” she demanded to know, and suddenly she looked almost near tears. “You _love_ spending time with him all of a sudden, and it’s ‘training this’ and ‘training that’. It’s _obvious.”_

I closed my eyes. That was…quite a bit to unpack. “Right, okay. First of all, I talk about training a lot because I’ve actually been enjoying it lately, and that’s because I’ve made some huge jumps. I’m better than I ever thought I could be, and that feels amazing. I’m proud of myself. And because I can do stuff now, it’s a lot more fun.”

Lenya swallowed hard. “Oh. Well, yeah, that…that makes sense.”

“Yes, it does,” I said pointedly. “I do understand that it’s utterly not your thing, but for me, it’s gone from a necessity to, I don’t know, a hobby that I’m actually pretty good at. Something like that, anyway.”

She looked down again. “Okay,” she said meekly.

“Second of all…I’m not sure who put the idea in your head that this _has_ to be something romantic, but…no. Just no. Yes, I’m actually friends with him now, and yes, it’s fucking weird, it’s not like I don’t get that. But I’m not interested in him, or even attracted to him.”

“Good to know,” she said. “I’m sorry I assumed.”

“Christ,” I said. “We must have spent even less time together lately than I thought, if that’s where your mind wanders.”

She nodded again but also pointed out, “Forgive me for saying this, but you’re, um, really angry about the mere implication, you know.”

I made a face. “Yes, yes, protesting too much and all of that. I know what you’re getting at. But the thing is, you seem to assume I’m completely at peace with the entire situation when I’m very much not. Don’t you think I’m having a near-constant crisis about the entire thing? I mean, I’ve still got this.” I gestured to the scar on my throat.

She nodded once more.

I sighed. “I’m sorry for going off on you. The Strikers being gone is stressing me out. Jess hasn’t been feeling well and I’m worried she’s off her game, and Bishop’s still complaining about America being a horrible partner who’ll get him killed.”

“I hate it too,” she said. Her pose became a little bit more relaxed. “I figured you felt the same, and I thought you wouldn’t mind a distraction.”

“I don’t,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Do you mind if I ask one more question about, um, things?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’ve pretty much vented all my frustration at this point.”

“I just want to know…why? Why be friends with him, if you remember the sort of person he is?”

“I just…it’s hard to explain. I understand him a bit more now, and it’s…weirdly comfortable. I don’t know, I can’t really express it. I’ll get back to you when I can.”

“That was, I’m sorry to say, the absolute opposite of articulate.” Lenya grinned. “But I’ll accept for now that it defies understanding. Friends?”

“Friends,” I confirmed, and gave in to the sappy temptation to hug the living daylights out of her.

*~*

The Strikers were gone all day. It wasn’t unusual for them to travel further afield, so that in itself didn’t make me freak out, but it did mean that the mess hall was weirdly empty and there was a feeling of unease in the air. I went to bed eventually, assuming there’d be some manner of news when I woke up.

And then there was a knock on my door at three thirty in the morning.

“What,” I said flatly when I got a good look at Bishop, who looked half-dead and was swaying unsteadily. There was a bottle of vodka in his hand.

“I know you don’t like drinking with me,” he said without preamble, “but…fuck.”

Well then. Something had obviously gone _really_ fucking wrong.

I stepped aside so he could enter and then promptly had to support him as he swayed again, dangerously close to toppling over, which was weird, because his eyes looked clear. This wasn’t a drunken haze.

“Shouldn’t you be in Medical? What’s wrong with you?”

“No. Tell you in a moment.” He collapsed onto my bed, dropped the bottle with a massive clanging sound and sat there, forearms propped on his thighs, head lowered. “Fuck,” he said again.

“Okay,” I said. “Now I’m worried. Like, _really_ worried.”

He looked up then and just said, “Dean’s dead.”

I felt like I’d been plunged in ice water. “Shit,” I said tonelessly and sat next to him because I suddenly couldn’t feel my legs. “Oh, fucking hell.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That.”

“What happened?”

He sighed and nodded at the bottle. “Can you open that? I’m weak as a fucking kitten right now.”

I obliged and got two cups, then poured us both a generous amount.

“Fuck,” I repeated, for good measure.

“Shadows,” Bishop said.

“What?”

“There were shadows. Like, shadow creatures. They latch on to your own shadow and drain your energy – until you’re nothing but a dried-up husk, if you let them.”

I rubbed my upper arms, where goosebumps had suddenly appeared. “Jesus,” I said. “How…you can’t…how do you kill something like that?”

“Ha,” Bishop said, and he sounded more bitter than I’d ever heard him. “That’s the fun part. They’re immune to bullets. Immune to blades - obviously. They’re literal shadows. They don’t have a body you can wound.”

I waited.

“Fire,” he said. “Fire can kill them, and a few other things. By the time I realized what we were dealing with, it was almost too late. We had flares, so we managed, eventually. Dean was the first one they got to, though, and we weren’t quick enough.”

I couldn’t manage to say anything, and I didn’t think he was expecting or wanting me to. He drank, deeply, and then slammed his empty cup on the nightstand and almost shouted, “You know what we could have used out there today? A _fucking mage.”_

He noticed almost right away that he’d triggered that fear in me yet again, mostly because I jumped and scrambled a good two feet away from him, body suddenly shaking.

“Sorry,” he said, more softly. “Sorry. I’m just… I’m not angry at you. Alex, maybe, for not listening when I told him that, but not you.”

“I know.” I took a deep breath. He hadn’t tried to get drunk with me again after he’d scared me so badly the one time we had attempted it, and I wasn’t thrilled that it was happening again, but this wasn’t exactly business as usual. I could forgive it, I was pretty sure, considering the circumstances.

“You alright?” he asked, glancing up at me.

I nodded and forced myself to move closer again just to prove that I was.

“Not sure I’d have been of much use even if I’d been there,” I pointed out.

“Magic gets to them. All we’d have needed was your taser spell.”

“Oh,” I said softly.

He took a few deep breaths and said, “I’m not the only one who’s like this. Tamika, Naeem, Jess – the less annoying one – and America, too, they all got drained. America and I both would have been fine if she’d fucking listened to me, but of course, she didn’t. I don’t know why I still expect her to, at this point.”

It seemed ridiculous, but I just kind of wanted to crawl under the bed and hide, except we were talking about sentient shadows, and…shit, I wasn’t going to be able to sleep for a week.

I said as much, and Bishop barked a laugh. “Yeah. Me neither.”

God, this sucked so much. I couldn’t even make myself think about Dean; I didn’t have the emotional energy to start processing.

I took a sip, coughed, and grimaced. “What’s wrong with beer? Why do you always have to bring hard alcohol?”

“Beer doesn’t get me drunk quickly enough.”

“Some people,” I said and took another careful sip, “think that the point of drinking doesn’t have to be getting drunk.”

“Yeah, well, some people are idiots. Most of them, actually.” He sighed and stared at his cup. “Can’t forget anything if I’m not drunk enough.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I can see why you’d need to.”

He scrubbed his face with his palm. “I used to be better about this – having someone I fought next to die. This place has fucked with my head. You all have. I fucking hate it here.”

I gathered my courage and asked, “Do you, really? Would you rather be back there, just…not ever have come through?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, then huffed a bitter laugh. “Gods, I can’t even lie about that, can I?”

“If you want to lie, lie,” I said. “I won’t call you out on it. But I think that you think I know more than I do.”

He looked down. “You know about the Knight Captain. Don’t you?”

“Wasn’t all that specific,” I said, “but I can take a pretty good guess, I think. The woman you betrayed just before you came through?”

His hands had at some point gotten busy tearing off pieces of the bottle etiquette and dropping them to the floor. He looked at his work and nothing else. “I had…feelings. Couldn’t handle it. Thought it was best to get everyone involved killed.”

“I…can’t pretend to follow that logic,” I said. “But I can accept that it made sense to you.”

“I’m not even sure it did.” The mild scratching noise as his fingernail scraped against the bottle was the only sound in the room besides our voices. It felt…unreal, somehow, like we were outside of time. Or maybe it was just way too fucking late and I really needed to try and sleep.

“I’d planned on dying,” he admitted. “Thought this was one of the hells when I came through.”

I frowned. “I thought it was just a weird quirk, the way you curse, but…there really are several?”

“Nine.”

“Huh. That’s weird.”

“I’ll tell you about them some other time.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “You should do that. And I’m glad you didn’t die.”

He looked up at that.

“Yes, despite the scars,” I said. “You grew on me, you asshole.”

He huffed out a breath of bleak amusement. “Why do we always get so fucking emotional when we’re drunk? That’s not usually the kind of drunk I am.”

“What do you mean, ‘always’? This is literally the second time we’ve ever tried to do this.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah.”

“Want to tell me about her?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not now. Not ever, maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Okay.”

“What else do you know? About my life.”

“That it was shit, pretty much.”

“That’s about right, yeah.” He sighed and opened the bottle again. “Here.”

I let him refill my cup. This time around, I was rather more cooperative with the whole actually drinking the alcohol bit.

“You were tortured,” I blurted out after a long pause. “When they tried to…to break your will.”

His head dropped down again. He gave a slight nod.

I hesitated, then said, “I want to say ‘I’m sorry’ or some trite bullshit like that, but I feel like you’d bash my head into a wall for it.”

He chuckled weakly at that. “Don’t have the energy to. Besides, I told you I’m not going to hurt you outside of the training court.”

“That’s…good to know,” I said softly.

There was a silence several minutes long before he asked, “Do you remember what happened the day we got drunk the first time?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There are taser marks on the wall of my lab, because apparently that’s my version of punching one.”

“Nice,” he said. “Not what I meant though. Girl who was hit by the boiling water.”

Oh, shit. I had a horrible feeling that I knew where this was going.

“Good thing no one tried to stop me getting away from the mess hall,” he said, voice low. “I’d have killed them.”

I closed my eyes for a breath and then said the same thing he’d once said to me. “Let me see them.”

He reached back and pulled his shirt over his head, dropping it weakly on the floor. The mass of scars wasn’t any easier to look at the second time round.

“Boiling water was here,” he said, touching just above his hip and drawing his fingers upwards. “Lot of it got covered up by the burn scars from the fire though. Kind of a shame. Worked hard to get those.”

I reached out, then hesitated. “Do you mind?” I asked.

He shook his head.

I traced a line from his mid-back diagonally to his shoulder blade. It was silvery, with little spidery offshoots like it was a plant, trying to grow roots into the skin.

“Not sure what made that one,” he said. “A lot of it is a blur.”

An inch further up, there was the brand, and I traced that too. “Was that from the, the…”

“Circle.” He sounded hoarse as he said it. “Yes. They bought me fair and square, after all. Had to mark their property. It wasn’t even a practical thing, it could be hidden way too easily, so they couldn’t have used it to track me if I ever got away. It was just…”

“Dehumanizing.”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking hell.” I exhaled a slow breath and, without thinking, tilted forward a bit and leaned my forehead on him, next to the brand. “I can’t…fuck. People say this ‘there are no words’ bullshit so often, and right now, I can’t –”

“Stop,” he sighed. “It happened. It’s over. I’m still here, by some fucking miracle.”

“Fuck,” I said again as I slid back so I could sit cross-legged next to him.

“You gonna keep repeating that?”

“Yeah,” I said. _“Fuck.”_

Once again, we let a long silence spread out between us. It was heavy and comforting at the same time, somehow, and I didn’t mind letting it envelop me. Eventually though, Bishop turned to me.

“Hey,” he said.

“Yes?”

“I want –” He looked down. “I know you don’t actually want to be a Striker.”

“Yes,” I said. “So?”

“If we ever do need that kind of support…fuck, with how much the Veil’s been tearing lately, it’s more of a _when_ than an _if –”_

“Yeah. I’d do it.”

“Good.” He swallowed hard. “I want to start training you to fight with me. Not just against me. So you’re ready, in case you’re ever out there with us and you end up needing to.”

“I thought you had to do that with America.”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything that’ll get me killed,” he said harshly. “She almost managed to, today. _You_ would have been of way more help against these things. Striker or not, that’s a pretty damn easy decision.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. “Let’s train for that.”

“Good.” He blinked. “I need to sleep.”

I nodded. “Me too.”

“Mind if I do that on your floor?”

“Don’t mind, no. I’d appreciate it, actually. Don’t like the idea of an empty room. Hold on, I’ve got an extra blanket.”

I slid off the bed and dug through my closet while he sluggishly dropped to the floor and stretched out with a slow, soft sigh.

“Lenya thinks I’m in love with you,” I said and dropped a fleece blanket on top of him.

He snorted. “No you’re not.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’m glad you let me know. I’d have kept wondering forever.”

“You’re welcome,” he mumbled, and then he was already dropping into sleep.


	24. Absolute Zero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a trigger warning for this chapter. To avoid spoilers for those who don't want them, I put the specifics in the end notes of the chapter.

**Absolute Zero**

_(the lowest temperature that is theoretically possible)_

A lot of things changed in the aftermath of Dean’s death, although gradually, as new ideas were decided on and implemented.

Two new people were recruited to oversee the Strikers alongside Alex and Colonel Haley, and they provided knowledge of a much broader range of fighting styles and tactics. The Strikers’ entire training regimen was overhauled, and none of them had anywhere near as much free time as they’d had before. That included Jess and Bishop, so my lab was once more a rather lonely place, even though Lenya did make it a point to stop by regularly when she wasn’t hanging out with Ayesha and Dollface.

But I had new directives too – Alex wanted me to figure out how to use my magic to provide weapons and tactical gear. I had no idea what he was smoking, because I could hardly install vacuum chambers with strontium rods inside a bunch of grenades. I’d tried before to store the magic I’d pulled from the Weave somewhere, but it had proven to be impossible. It was there for me to draw on, but as soon as my concentration wavered, the magic fizzled. I tried anyway, because it was my job, but the work felt pointless.

The Strikers were all over the place. Whenever I was in the Striker kitchen, tempers seemed to be running short, people were constantly hungover, and apparently, they got free condoms now, because – yeah.

Dollface and Leslie were suddenly in the habit of smoking cigarettes ten times a day. Naeem developed a tendency to zone out and stare at nothing for up to five minutes at a time. Savannah’s once perfect fingernails were bitten to hell. Lucas, who’d been close with Dean, was now closed off and distant and refused to see a therapist.

I thoroughly did not enjoy the mood that the entire institute had been gripped by, that serious, intense focus on revenge against whatever was foolish enough to fall through the Veil next. It scared me. My anxiety was a constant companion, and for the first time in a long while, my fear threatened to slowly drown me.

Training was what kept me sane, barely. It had changed quite a bit now that Bishop had decided he wanted to prepare me in case I was ever needed out in the field. There was a lot to learn, a lot for me to get used to, and a lot of room to improve – and I did.

“You know,” Bishop said one day in early June, almost four months after Dean’s death. “Even back in Faerun, I never saw anyone combine fighting and magic quite the way you do.”

I frowned. “Really?”

“Yeah. They focus on one thing only, generally. With you…you’ve developed an instinct for how to fight so you can make the best use of your strength and speed bursts. It’s interesting.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

“Wasn’t a compliment. Just an observation.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Come on,” he said, adjusting the grip on his blade. “Again.”

We had swords now. Alex had finally gotten to the point of listening to Bishop, probably because Bishop had been here long enough and proven himself enough that putting trust in him no longer seemed like a suicidal undertaking. They hadn’t decided to have everyone learn how to use them, but eight of them had been chosen to. Bishop, because he knew how to kill with a sword and therefore did most of the teaching, had simply designated two of the provided weapons for his use and mine.

So now, I was holding a sword, and while it was nerve-wracking, it was also kind of cool. Just like with staves and hand-to-hand, I used strength and speed and agility burst to gain an edge, and my confidence was growing. Along with it, I was starting to get comfortable standing by Bishop’s side and guarding his flank. Jess and Naeem had come in a few times, so we actually had someone to fight against, and all things considered, it had gone pretty well.

I still lost the next exchange, however – I might have been getting better, but Bishop really was impressive with a sword – and ended up with his blade against my throat. He dropped his arm after a second or so.

“I can’t get through your guard,” I complained.

“That’s because it’s good.”

“Teach me how.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Hells no. You need to figure out for yourself what my weak points are.”

“You don’t _have_ any.”

“Everyone does.”

When he laid his blade down for a water break, I followed suit. He got to the bench first and tossed me my bottle without warning and like he was pitching a baseball. I only just managed to catch it. He’d been testing my reflexes that way for a while now.

“How’s things with America?” I asked.

He sighed. “Don’t remind me. Nothing’s changed, and to no one’s surprise, she’s turning out to be utterly shit with a sword.”

“I know you’ve managed to simply scare all the others off, but have you thought about just _asking_ for a new partner?”

“Did. Take a wild guess what the answer was.”

“’Of course, Bishop, anything for our beloved best Striker whom everyone adores.’”

He squinted at me. “When did you get so mouthy, anyway?”

“Probably around the time we started getting drunk together, because it gets rid of my brain-to-mouth filter.”

“Ah, yes,” he said. “That.”

“That,” I agreed, and screwed my bottle shut. “It’s my birthday, by the way. If you want, stop by my room later for cake.”

“If that’s your way of propositioning me, I’ve heard better.”

I blinked and looked at my water bottle. “Be glad I wasn’t drinking just now. I might have sprayed water all over you.”

“Knew your bottle was shut before I said it.”

I snorted inelegantly. “You’re such an ass.”

He didn’t even bother confirming that and instead sat on the bench. “Who in the hells thought up something like birthdays? There’s nothing great about existing for the same random, repeated amount of time.”

I tilted my head. “You don’t know yours, do you?”

He shook his head, then added, “And no, that’s not why I hate them.”

“You know, it’s odd that it never even occurred to me to wonder about this, but – how old are you?”

“Best I can tell, between twenty-three and twenty-five. Probably closer to twenty-five.” He shrugged. “Today’s your twenty-third?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t expect me to congratulate you.”

“Ha,” I said. “Trust me, I know you better than that by now.”

“Good,” he said. There was a moment of silence before he picked the conversation back up. “Anette saw me come out of your room the other day when I stayed over and gave me a talking to.”

Anette was one of the two trainers Alex had recruited. I hadn’t yet seen enough of her to make up my mind on whether I liked her.

I leaned forward with a sigh and put my head down. _“Why_ does everyone keep assuming we’re sleeping together?”

“Probably because I’ve fucked my way through a considerable portion of the female population here.”

“Well, yes, I know,” I said. “That doesn’t make it any less ridiculous that no one seems to understand the concept of male-female friendship.”

I’d gotten far more used to the idea of us being friends throughout the past few months. It would always be kind of bizarre if I made an effort to think about it, but such was life, and I generally didn’t bother. I didn’t have a reason to. Lenya and Alex had long since settled into a state of resigned acceptance and were no longer trying to force me to discuss or explain any of it, which was good, because I really couldn’t. It was just…something that had developed without rhyme or reason when I hadn’t been paying attention.

“Preaching to the choir here,” he said.

I grinned. My head was still down though, so I doubted he could see it. “Where’d you learn that one?”

“Chester. I was complaining about Anette being a cunt, and he said that. And then he told me he’d break my nose if I broke your heart, and then I called him a cunt, too. Didn’t go over well.”

“Does it ever?”

“Depends,” he said. “Would you mind it if I called you a cunt?”

“Yep.”

He was quiet for a moment, then shrugged. “Good to know.”

*~*

“So,” I heard behind me when I was busy rinsing my oatmeal bowl. “You still playing baby Striker?”

I suppressed a groan of annoyance. While for the most part the Strikers had accepted me for what I was – someone who had a place in the prism, who hung out in their spaces, who was friends with some of them – there were a few who’d been here since the start who hadn’t let go of their nonsensical grudges - like Leslie. And to say I was sick as hell of it was putting it mildly.

I took a couple of seconds to think about a fitting retort, and then said, “Better baby Striker than a drama-queen eternally stuck in her high school glory days.”

There was a moment of stunned silence, then –

“Bitch, turn around and say that again.”

My pulse spiked a little, but I realized with satisfaction that I’d gotten to the point where this sort of casual hostility didn’t leave me panicked and weak-kneed with my stomach churning. I considered my options for a moment, put the bowl down in the sink, and turned to her.

“Why?” I asked. “Did you like hearing it that much?”

It wasn’t that I was better than her – she’d fought for much longer and had a huge amount of practical experience that I lacked – but that I was pretty damn certain she had no idea I had combat magic. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even entirely sure she knew I had magic at all.

She stepped closer, too close for comfort, and I considered whether I should start tracing my taser spell rune, but I was pretty confident I’d be able to hold my own with the combat stuff that needed no runes, at least while she was surprised.

“You do realize I still fuck your boyfriend all the time, right?” she asked with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

Oh my god, this was just getting ridiculous. Who the hell was it that kept spreading this rumor, and what was the best way to murder them?

“What!” I exclaimed, widening my eyes. “Oh no! Gasp! Shock! Horror! How dare you!”

She stared at me.

“He’s _not my boyfriend,”_ I said, “Although I might actually have to give him shit about his horrible taste in bed-warmers.”

I’d never really been quick-witted in situations like this, or good with insults, but hanging out with Bishop had apparently changed me in more ways than I’d realized. It was satisfying to see Leslie’s face when it finally dawned on her that I was not going to be the pushover she’d probably remembered me as.

Next thing I knew, she had a handful of my hair and was kneeing me hard between the legs, which hurt like hell and would probably cause the most massive bruise known to mankind on my pubic bone. While I still gasped, she put her free hand around my throat and squeezed.

That was when my newly developed instincts finally kicked in. I grabbed hold of her wrist, shot a burst of strength into my arm, and squeezed until she let go of my throat with a pained cry. Bishop had taught me that hurting people’s hand or wrist often had them instinctively hunch a bit and pull it protectively toward their chest, even if just for a moment, and I took advantage of that and grabbed _her_ hair so I could push her head down and bring my knee up.

I didn’t manage to connect with her nose – shame – but I did hit her jaw pretty damn hard. The jarring impact finally got her to let go of me. I realized at that point that I couldn’t actually try to incapacitate her in any of the ways Bishop had taught me, because they were all brutal as hell and I couldn’t imagine that the ‘she pulled my hair first’ excuse would fly with Anette, Martin, Haley, or even Alex if I injured one of their Strikers to that extent.

Because I didn’t exactly have time to contemplate what the best course of action might be, and because I thought I’d made my point well enough, I yanked on the Weave with my mind and used the resulting magic to push the world around me gently downward, a bit like one might gesture to someone to lower their voice, until Leslie was gasping in slow motion. I took three steps to get around her, and then the magic slipped away from my weakening grasp as it always did when I used a burst, but I was out of her field of vision and able to simply walk out of the kitchen before she realized what had happened.

My steps echoed in my ears as I made my way up to the lab.

Well.

Okay then.

For my first actual fight, that had gone pretty well, hadn’t it?

Although, I decided as I exited the stairwell at the top floor, I really was going to give Bishop shit about sleeping with a petty, juvenile drama queen.

*~*

When there was a knock on my door at four in the morning, I assumed it was Bishop, because he was the only one who was in the habit of showing up whenever the hell he felt like it. But it was Ayesha, and she was upset to the point of hyperventilating.

“Can you…I need…”

I grabbed a pair of shorts I’d gotten into the habit of keeping by my nightstand – because being dressed only in a t-shirt felt certifiably awkward when people stopped by whenever the hell they felt like it – and put it on hurriedly while asking, “What happened?”

“Lenya,” she said. “I…she…he, he…”

“Take a deep breath,” I instructed her. “Is someone hurt?”

“Yes,” she said. “Well, not…I don’t think he was _rough,_ but…”

My heart dropped, three floors and counting. I could feel the shakes coming on, the ones I’d thought I had under control now. “Where is she?”

“It’s my fault,” Ayesha whispered. “It’s my fault.” But she led me over to Lenya’s room without further prompting and pushed the door open with a near-sob.

For a split-second, I actually thought Lenya was dead, because it looked so utterly unnatural to see her draped across the bed like a broken training dummy. But then she sluggishly lifted her head, and I saw that her eyes were unfocused, barely opening.

“Drunk or drugged?” I asked hoarsely.

“Drunk, just drunk…everyone was drinking so much, except for me, and I tried, but I couldn’t take care of them all at once, and Jess was throwing up so much I was afraid she’d choke on it so when Lucas said he’d help, I told him to make sure Lenya got back safe, and –”

I closed my eyes, tried to breathe through the utter fury, and failed. Lenya was wearing nothing but a slightly stained tank top, just left there like she was nothing.

“’Rena?” she asked feebly.

“Yes. Hey, hon.”

“Don’ like it.”

“I know, Lenya, I know.” I wanted to cry, except that wasn’t productive, so I swallowed it all down and focused on the task at hand. “Ayesha, can you find her something to wear, sweatpants or something?”

“You look…” Lenya blinked heavily. “Purple.”

“Ha,” I said, reaching out to brush a strand of hair from her face. “That’s silly. Can you tell me what happened with Lucas?”

“Hm.” She frowned and was quiet for so long I thought she’d forgotten the question. “Wasn’t nice,” she said eventually, clearly having trouble forming the words. “I wanted chocolate. Or ice cream.”

“Right, okay. And what did he do instead of getting you ice cream?”

“The, the thing,” she said slowly. “The thing that you do with boys.” Behind me, I heard Ayesha sniff as she worked a pair of sweatpants up Lenya’s utterly limp legs.

“Did he hurt you?”

“…maybe?” she asked, apparently unsure. “Wasn’t nice. Wanted a shower, but he just did the thing.”

“I’m sorry, Lenya. I’m sorry he did that.”

She closed her eyes then and was quiet. Ayesha continued to struggle against her tears.

“Once you have those on, we need to get her to Medical,” I said as I walked toward the door. “I need to grab something from my room really quick.”

When I got back, Ayesha already had Lenya in her arms. I opened doors for her and turned lights on as we made our way from Res to Medical, Ayesha still crying and me shaking with cold fury.

“He was sober?” I asked at one point.

“Seemed to be. I can’t believe he did that; I can’t believe he’d –”

“I know,” I said. I wasn’t sure whether I was upset at her for leaving Lenya, vulnerable, in the hands of some guy, even if she knew him. Intellectually, I knew that it wasn’t fair, that she’d done her best, but my emotions didn’t care one bit. “Is everyone else taken care of?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Everyone’s fine. I was on my way back to my room, thought I’d check on her to make sure she got here safe and wasn’t throwing up too, and I found her like that.”

“Know where Lucas might be?”

“Probably asleep,” she said. “Don’t think anyone usually parties past three.”

“Right, okay,” I said. I was trying hard to breathe evenly. “Once we get to Medical, I need you to stay with her and support her while I go and make sure someone knows about what happened.”

“Okay,” she said meekly.

And I did leave in a sprint once Peggy had been woken up and was there to help – thank fucking god it was her on duty and not Claus – but I didn’t go to get Anette, or Martin, or Alex. I knew how things had happened with Elliot, that he’d been kicked out and nothing more, and it wasn’t enough for me this time.

“I need your help,” I told a disheveled Bishop once he opened the door. I knew how good he was at snapping all of his senses to complete focus in less than a second if he felt he needed to, and he didn’t disappoint. His gaze was, immediately, keen and alert.

“With what?” he asked sharply.

“I need to shoot someone.”

He blinked, once, and then pushed the door open a little further in invitation, turned, and walked back into his room. It took him literally less than twelve seconds to dress.

“Shoot who?” he asked as he did it.

“Lucas. Not fatally, but I sure as hell want it to hurt.”

“Why?”

“He raped Lenya.”

Bishop nodded once. “Which part do you need help with?”

“I don’t know if I can do it,” I said. “Mentally. I’m not entirely sure I can manage to pull the trigger.”

He nodded again. A moment later, he had his bow in hand, which surprised me. I’d never seen him shoot it – hell, I hadn’t even been sure he’d finished it.

“He in his room?” Bishop asked, nodding toward the door and following after me when I obeyed the silent command. A moment later, we’d started on a fast pace towards the stairwell.

“I assume so. Ayesha said he would be, and I was hoping you’d know which one’s his.”

“I do. Does she know what you plan on doing?”

“No,” I said, mouth dry, and took my gun out of its holster, which I’d strapped on in a hurry. I weighed it in my hand. It felt heavier than normal, now that I was about to use it for real.

I was grateful, in that moment, that I’d come to know Bishop. It hadn’t even occurred to me to wonder how he might react when I showed up in the middle of the night and announced my intent to put a bullet in one of his fellow Strikers. I’d already known. I’d known he would be focused, I’d known he would take me seriously, I’d known he wouldn’t try to talk me out of it. I’d fully expected him to do exactly what he was doing – to help me, without hesitation.

“When you trained with Alex,” Bishop said, “remember how you felt before every single shot you took. Remember how he talked you through it and remember the way it felt to pull the trigger.”

“Okay,” I said, trying my damndest to breathe evenly.

“Take your anger and put it on a leash. You’ll need it. But you also need to keep it from taking over.”

“Got it,” I confirmed and started trying to rearrange my mind the way I thought it needed to be to get this done.

“Expect it to be hard. Wounding isn’t killing, but the mindset’s the same. If I think you’re in danger, or if you can’t do it, I’ll step in. I’ll stay back, but I’ll have my bow trained on him.”

My mouth was dry. “Where’s the best place to shoot him?”

“Thigh. Two shots. Avoid the femoral artery.”

“Got it.”

“Room Three-Seven-three.” He nodded for me to keep going while he stopped and melted into the shadows in a way that I probably would have found impressive if I hadn’t been so focused on what I was planning to do. I took twelve more steps and stopped in front of room three-seven-three.

I knocked.

I was ready when Lucas opened the door. My insides were a block of ice, but I embraced the feeling and made use of it to numb the rest of my nerves, to let it settle me. I felt cold and focused, and I’d had the safety off and was aiming by the time he realized what was happening.

“What the f –”

Two shots. Thigh. And I didn’t hit the femoral artery.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning: Off-page sexual assault.


End file.
